Alice Birch’s latest play, Romans, dissects toxic masculinity through focus on a single family’s three sons, and their own evolution as people. We see them as children, then young men, then as grown adults with wives and children. This sounds very straightforward for something from Alice Birch, but it is anything but; while we see the same people through their lives, their lives span not just the decades of reality, but catapult through historical periods, so we see Edwardian children, free spirited 1960’s young men, and then 2025 adult men….and all that comes with it. By removing the artifice of the realities of time, Birch can remain laser focussed; what we experience today, and the way men behave isn’t new. It has been happening for centuries, and is so deeply rooted we struggle to see it clearly.
The women in the play serve an important purpose — in the mens’ world they are at first props (quite literally at times) whereas when we get closer to today, the women push back, they comment, they observe and act. Indeed, in case a viewer were to think that Birch is in any way condoning the poor behaviour, the women at points comment on the play and characters outwardly, in a meta-theatrical way….reminding us of what we’re watching and what it means. The violence in both the words and actions lingers in the air.
Sam Pritchard’s production is slick; in particular the use of sound, amplification, and music as well as the use of the inventive stage setup, almost piled upon itself. Like London, in this set if you dig deep enough you’ll find something older, something different. The performances are uniformly excellent — and I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t make the leap to a West End transfer.
This script is the story we need right now.