This play's abortion scene made grown men faint – and I’m thrilled it’s about to get a bigger audience | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Annie Ernaux’s The Years is transferring to the West End. It’s about time the arts confront the way women’s bodies work
Following a sold-out run at the Almeida theatre, this month The Years – a stage adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s choral novel of 21st-century womanhood – transfers to the West End. The play became somewhat notorious because of the impact that its abortion scene was having on audience members. In the scene, a bloodied Romola Garai recounts passing a dead foetus after an illegal backstreet abortion, a performance our theatre critic described as “devastating”. A preview last summer had to be stopped as several audience members requested medical assistance, while another shouted at the cast that the scene had been “a disgrace” and protested that “there was no warning” (content notes were, in fact, provided).
As I wrote in the autumn, I had assumed these fainters were women, triggered by the trauma of past experiences, but that was sexist of me. It was in fact mostly men who were passing out, and a man who yelled at the cast. No one fainted when I saw the play, but someone did leave, and another audience member, head in hands, looked distinctly green about the gills. As the play opens to even larger audiences and more exposure, it will be interesting to see if the faintings – and the headlines – continue, or if staging the play in a less intimate theatre changes the scene’s impact.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
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