In 2022, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.” The French writer, born in 1940, uses simple, specific language to examine the ways gender and class have affected her. Ernaux has authored several books, such as A Man’s Place and A Woman’s Story, but Years is the subject of this play, adapted and directed by the Norwegian director Eline Arb. An autobiographical narrative written in the third person, Years is the story of a woman and the rapidly changing postwar society in which she lives. Arb divides the play into 12 time frames, each introduced by an old photograph of Ernaux. The show premiered in the Hague in 2022 and is now transferring to London. Five actresses play Ernaux at different stages of her life: Romola Garai, Anjili Mohindra, and Harmony Rose-Bremner are her younger selves; after 40, it’s Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay. As the protagonist transitions from daughter to mother to grandmother, so do her perspectives on self and womanhood. —Jeanne Malle