romans, a novel

Photo: thestage.co.uk

Alice Birch's new play spans multiple generations and across all kinds of lives and does not limit itself to the male experience of life, despite being an exploration of the effect of male narratives on our world. This piece is an odyssey of time, an epic to tackle for any creative which may fall short of reaching everyone who sees it as a result of its wide scope. Once again, the Almeida is asking unanswerable questions and pulling at the audience's emotionl triggers and boundaries. Theatre like this is how we start to answer the questions that need to be answered in our world.

Part of this assessment comes from the issues I had with this production, as it is unusual that I come away from a production that I didn't fully love still believing it is a necessary contribution to the industry. My impulse reaction was to be insulted that I was being presented with what I saw to be a male version of 'The Years' at the Harold Pinter Theatre a few months ago, as what one might call an angry feminist reaction. It threw me off at first, but I was desperate to try and understand this framing of our world, knowing that as a creative myself, this is what I want my art to do for others. What I at first thought were jarring, disjointed acts that were a poor challenge to the flowing chapters of 'The Years', after some thought symbolise three expansive areas that could mean space, time, person or place. In the final act, the overlapping of the three brothers' storylines suggest that all could be one and one could be all. Whichever storyline you felt drawn to or had experience with was enveloped within the scene as a whole and you understood where you stand in the world as a whole and how all these parts dance together. There was no feeling of alienation from this piece.

Each performance was equally as captivating in this piece. The skill of showing three different stages of life within one character is to be marvelled at and celebrated, and not always recognising a returning actor as a different character is a testimony to the performers and their mastery over the story and the journey that the play takes them and us on. I felt as though at a few moments, some technical hiccups were stunting the performer's ability to deliver the emotional drive of the piece, which was disappointing, but also highlighted how alive this live performance is and why the theatre space at the Almeida is often the best for pieces such as this.

I am grateful to Alice Birch and Sam Pritchard, and all the actors for teaching me a real lesson through this piece. Although I stand by my angry feminist sensibilities always, this piece taught me to trust the process and allow myself to be open to what these creatives could be trying to say. Not everything is an attack on your world beliefs, and as someone who makes their own work I should be open to different perspectives, as you will always come up against them. As someone said to me recently; theatre is not to provoke debate, it is to provoke a feeling.