Although she turned in a fine adaptation of Lorca‘s The House of Bernarda Alba for the National Theatre a couple of years ago, it’s been an age since we’ve had a ‘proper’ play from the wonderful Alice Birch, whose Anatomy of a Suicide and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. were two of the great British stage works of the ’10s. There’s no secret what she’s been up to since: her screenwriting career has massively taken off, most notably with Lady Macbeth and the screen adaptation of Normal People, although she’s pretty damn busy generally.
Anyway, long story short, Romans: A Novel is her first ‘original’ play in years, which is cause for celebration in and of itself. Plus it sounds like she’s lost none of her ambition: the somewhat cryptically titled play is a dissection of masculinity from the nineteeth century to the present and the way in which male narratives shape the world as we know. Precisely what it’ll involve is very much TBC, but it will star Andor’s Kyle Soller and will be directed by Sam Pritchard, Birch’s husband.
