Five Actors on Adapting Annie Ernaux’s Memoir for the Stage

Annie Ernaux was 61 when, on a September morning in 2001, two planes crashed into New York’s twin towers. “Our image of the world was turned upside down,” she wrote in her powerful collective autobiography The Years. “We saw the right was advancing everywhere. We turned away. We focused on ourselves again… we were mutating. We didn’t know what our new shape would be.”

For actor Anjli Mohindra, the event evokes a more personal change. She had just turned 11 and started at secondary school. Her first period had begun the previous day. “I’d forgotten about it until we started rehearsing,” she says. “Ernaux is fascinated by the evolution of her own body. She thinks a lot about her menstrual cycle and her menopause.”

Mohindra is one of five actors playing the Nobel prize-winning author at different stages of her life in a stage adaptation that sticks faithfully to the book while visualizing one of Ernaux’s central points—that to look back on a life is not to see one continuous person but a series of people shaped by the era. “It will be a slippery narrative,” the author wrote, “composed in an unremitting continuous tense, absolute, devouring the present as it goes.”

It is in the spirit of Ernaux—who describes herself as “the ethnographer of my own life”—that I find myself in a north London club, delving into the lives and times of the five actors who will represent her. First up are Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay, who play her older selves. They are quietly spoken and reluctant to draw simplistic parallels between Ernaux’s experience and their own. Then in bounce Romola Garai, Mohindra, and Harmony Rose-Bremner, who play her younger selves, brimming with insights on a woman’s lot.

The play divides Annie’s life into 12 time zones, each introduced by an old photograph. The twin towers attack happens in the 11th section, spanning from 1999 to 2006. Ernaux, on a seaside holiday with her two adult sons, prompts the question: “How can these men be her children?” asks Annie Two, played by Mohindra. The irony of this question resonates deeply.

The show is the brainchild of Norwegian director Eline Arbo and is highly praised following its premiere in The Hague in 2022. It is “a dazzling history of a time and of a life”, one newspaper enthused. “Time flows through Annie, Annie flows through time,” wrote another. For Arbo, who took over Amsterdam’s Internationaal Theater Amsterdam last year, it combines her interests in sociological autobiography and powerful female interiority.

Ernaux was of the generation that was the first to do so many things, like go to university, and to have the pill.

Deborah Findlay

The Dutch production of The Years was in mid-run when Ernaux was awarded the Nobel prize in literature “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she exposes the roots, estrangements, and collective limitations of personal memory.” Though Ernaux has been publishing for nearly 50 years and has long been celebrated in France, she gained broader recognition in the anglophone world when The Years was shortlisted for the International Booker prize in 2019.

McKee discovered Ernaux after hearing about the upcoming Almeida production. “It was the gateway to wanting to read more of Annie’s work. I did it sort of upside down. And each time I read one of her books, I wanted to read more,” says the Bafta-winning actor, whose recent roles range from a steely counter-terrorism chief in Bodyguard to Gareth Southgate’s right-hand woman in Dear England at the National Theatre.

The stage adaptation of The Years begins in northern France, with a photograph of Ernaux aged about six: “She bulges out of her bodice, her skirt, with shoulder straps hiked up a little over her protruding belly.” The second world war had recently ended but remains vivid in her parents’ anecdotes.

Findlay, who grew up in Surrey, is closest to Ernaux in age at 76. “She was of the generation that was the first to do so many things,” she says. “I think of my generation as following on behind her.” Findlay, whose journey into acting included being part of Caryl Churchill’s feminist classic Top Girls at the Royal Court in 1982, slid into her career via an English degree. “I didn’t go to drama school. So it was a bit of a random journey. I’ve done all my learning in front of people,” she says.

Ernaux constantly indexes her own development against world events. For Findlay, it’s the assassination of John F Kennedy. For Garai and Mohindra, it’s the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. For Rose-Bremner, it’s the death of Amy Winehouse at seven. “Everyone was so sad. It opened up a little tear in the innocence of childhood,” she says.

McKee, who grew up in a coal-mining family, is cautious about memory. “I’m intrigued by how we use memory to validate our present,” she says. However, she vividly recalls the strikes in the 1970s. “You know, having suddenly to sit with candles – I actually made candles,” she says. She considers herself lucky to have been born when she was when opportunities were opening up for bright working-class girls.

There is something in Ernaux’s writings about her mother’s ambitions for her daughter that I really related to.

Romala Garai

This brings another major theme: social mobility. Neither Findlay nor McKee had any tradition of acting in their families. Inspired by local drama workshops, McKee auditioned for a TV series and landed her first role in her teens, which meant missing significant school.

Garai grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore, the daughter of a bank manager father and a mother from an ordinary background. For her family, private school was the goal. “Moving your children into another class moves them further away from you. Even though she’s this woman from a rural community in France, it’s a universal experience,” she says.

Mohindra’s story is also one of social mobility. Growing up in Nottingham, Mohindra had no family engagement with the arts. “I felt I was doing a lot of things for the first time in my family, like reading and wanting to be part of the arts,” she says. “It seems like a class thing to me.”

Over the course of The Years, Ernaux transitions from daughter to grandmother, complicating her perspective on womanhood. In her 20s, she has a backstreet abortion, dramatically recalling the diminishment of women denied autonomy over their bodies. “She would like to write about world events, but all she can think about is her missed period,” she writes.

Neither Findlay nor McKee have children. “All power to the women who have managed children and career,” says Findlay. Garai, the mother of two, notes the additional challenges of being a parent today. “Being a parent used to be just making sure they don’t die. Now, it’s about sustaining a life and work balance amid falling living standards and wage stagnation. That’s something that really falls on women,” she says.

It never even crossed my mind that people of any gender couldn’t make whatever choice they want.

Harmony Rose-Bremner

Mohindra agrees, saying: “Parenting culture is something I’ve struggled with. My mom was amazing, juggling numerous roles. I want to do it too, but the parenting culture adds pressure.” She and her partner, Sacha Dhawan, haven’t yet taken the parenting plunge. “There’s so much shame around,” she says.

Rose-Bremner, the daughter of Trainspotting actor Ewen Bremner, also has a strong maternal role model. “It never crossed my mind that people of any gender couldn’t make whatever choice they want,” she says.

Erneaux’s reflections on technology and its influence on women’s lives stop before the boom in social media, which has added pressure on mothers and daughters alike. They all agree that feminism today is a complex issue. “Once you’ve achieved goals on paper, you lose a lot of the language. How do we talk about the subtle ways women are disenfranchised now?” asks Garai. “Social media is a poison that affects the female experience, making life almost intolerable for young girls.”

Rose-Bremner, having grown up with Instagram, says, “Social media has become a place to manipulate minds. It’s so controlled by money and the patriarchal mindset. It’s just swallowing us up.”

Mohindra believes in the power of reading widely. “Intersectionality is starting to be part of the feminist narrative. I think we have to create space for those nuances.”

Listening to intergenerational communities of women is also valuable. There’s a touching moment when the actors name their formative roles. Findlay mentions Top Girls and Commitments. McKee cites Our Friends in the North. Garai chooses The Writer. Mohindra picks The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Suddenly, tears roll down Rose-Bremner’s face. She’s emotional because those roles were formative for her. “Seeing a character as strong as Rani hit me when I didn’t even understand why,” she says. “Watching The Writer was a profound experience for me. To be in a play with both of you…”

There can be few activities more Ernaux-esque than considering the experiences and achievements of seven talented women—five actors, a writer, and the adapter-director who has brought them together.

• The Years is at the Almeida theatre, London, 27 July-31 August

Source: The Observer