Five actors playing one character is a notion that London theatregoers know well. In The Years, adapted from Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical novel, the idea cohered into a personal history of someone living through wartime and post-war Europe.
This UK premiere of Tracy Letts’s play has no such sweeping backdrop, however. Rather the setting is largely domestic while the focus is on the unremarkable life of one American woman.
Yet by the end of Matthew Warchus’s uninterrupted, in-the-round production of 90 minutes we know a lot about the life of Mary Page Marlowe.
We know about her three husbands, her two children and her affairs. We also know about the destruction brought about by her drinking and, in the scenes played by this ensemble cast’s biggest star, Susan Sarandon, how in late middle age the chaos was replaced by content and calm, albeit informed by grief and regret.
