The Years (NHB Modern Plays)

'Memory pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.'

She strikes a pose and the camera shutter clicks… A child playing in the debris of the Second World War. Click. A student discovering parties and men's bodies. Click. An activist fighting for the right to choose. Click. A wife picking out a velvet sofa. Click. A mother taking her eldest to judo. Click. A lover, seducing a younger man. Click. A grandmother presenting her granddaughter to the camera. Click.

The Years/Les années is Annie Ernaux's critically acclaimed 'masterpiece' (Guardian), charting a woman's personal and political life against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war Europe.

Eline Arbo's inventive stage adaptation was premiered as De jaren by Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2022. It was first performed, in an English-language version by Stephanie Bain – after the translations by Alison L. Strayer and Tanya Leslie – at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2024, with a cast of five women collectively bringing to life the story of one woman, and a whole continent.

'Nothing short of theatrical magic' De Nederlandse Toneeljury