The Years
Harold Pinter Theatre
- Opens: Friday, 24 January 2025 -
Booking until: Saturday, 19 April 2025
The Years description
The Years, a five-star sold out production, deserves a West End transfer for being totally extraordinary. This unique play is hard-hitting, intimate and often disturbing, revealing one woman’s life through five fine female actors. If you love a story that ultimately makes you glad to be alive, this one’s for you.
Vivid and moving, described by some as a memoir play, the production is based on Nobel Prize winning author Annie Ernaux’s fearless 2008 book, Les Années.
A bold, intimate play about one woman’s life
Five female actors create an unapologetic, intimate portrait of one woman whose life is shaped by her rapidly-changing world, taking us from the post-WW2 years onwards. As the scenes unfold she poses and a camera clicks, capturing a child playing in the debris of a bomb site, a student discovering what it’s like to party, an activist fighting for the right to choose, a mum taking her child to judo. Each click moves us on to the next stage in her life.
Five women play one character
Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner gave extraordinary performances at the play’s UK premiere at the Almeida Theatre, where it sold out. It also sold out in the Netherlands’ Internationaal Theater Amsterdam.
Deborah Findlay delighted us on stage in Hedda Gabler, and Romola Garai in Giant. Gina McKee appeared in Dear England and Anjli Mohindra in Noises Off, while Harmony Rose-Bremner took to the stage for the RSC’s Hamnet. All five actors reprise their roles for 2025’s West End run, giving you a limited 12 week window to see this unique production.
Disturbing yet brilliant
International Theatre Amsterdam's new Artistic Director Eline Arbo directs her five-star adaptation of Ernaux's semi-autobiographical novel, which graphically depictions abortion, blood, and sexual content.
The creative team includes Music Supervisor and Sound Designer Thijs van Vuure, Set Designer Juul Dekker, Lighting Designer Varja Klosse, Costume Designer Rebekka Wörmann, Casting Director Amy Ball CDG and Associate Director Yasmin Hafesji. The play is produced by Sonia Friedman Productions.
