Possessors, Self-Dispossessed: ROMANS, A NOVEL at the Almeida Theatre

By the end of Alice Birch’s new epic-masculinity saga, I’m left half-astonished. Romans, A Novel is a play of great ambition – something that new plays should always be striving towards. Problems arise when a play’s fascinating form does not move in time with its content. Spanning over a century of masculine history and culture, this play is an examination of what this coalesced, singular idea has done in practice, when old-fashioned masculine narratives are forced onto the self, the family, the society, and the world.

Three brothers act as the common strand that holds these vast times and places together. The titular Romans are sons of a father (Declan Colon) who had “three dead girls before his first son.” Jack (Kyle Soller) is the oldest and our central character. He embodies all the great novelists of the last century: sea-fairing mythologists like Hemingway and Conrad. Marlow (Oliver Johnstone) is an imperialist turned industrialist turned ‘tech-bro’, the embodiment of the masculine narratives of power and wealth. Edmund (Stuart Thompson) is somebody whose place, purpose, and identity are never stable, straddled between wearing dresses as boy to partying around 1930s London to running bizarre mindfulness workshops where he lives as a badger.

Marlow becomes enraptured and embedded in the imperial system, stealing and profiting from the people he has colonised and butchered

Having clear-cut yet symbolic leading characters, a unified narrative should naturally follow. For the first act, this is delivered. From the first tableau of Uncle John, dressed in Victorian-era soldier uniform, showing off his gun to a young Jack, the play sets off on the right course. Empire, in all its forms, is portrayed as the ultimate masculine mission. The liminal timeline of the play has it that all three brothers live through both world wars and fight in them. Britannia, that glistening idea of a Britain without a horizon, is exposed as a nightmare. Jack is traumatised by the wars he has fought in, setting off his many literary quests. Marlow becomes enraptured and embedded in the imperial system, stealing and profiting from the people he has colonised and butchered (shouts of “You are committing a genocide” are hurled at him). Edmund gets lost even further, being arrested on suspicion of homosexuality and sinking ever deeper into himself.

Most of this action, which concludes Act One, takes place in a thrilling montage sequence with Merle Hensel’s rotating set adding to the grand events. Director Sam Pritchard achieves similar stylistic heights, mending minimalist set with engaging movement that makes Act One run like a Swiss watch.

Birch channels masculinity into a god force of the play

Watching Act One, I’m reminded of Eugene O’Neill, the prolific inventor of American drama. Asides and the notion of a novel in play form find their origins in O’Neill’s Strange Interlude. Birch channels masculinity into a god force of the play. O’Neill did much the same in his tragedies. The difference however, the thing that shines light on why Romans does not reach the ambitions that Birch aims for, lies in the singular theme. For O’Neill, he had an ability to keep a steady hand. Focusing in and drying out the titular theme for all it’s worth. Concentric circles that get narrower and narrower until they hit a nuclear centre and explode into bloody and poignant catharsis. The last never happens in Romans. Instead, Act Two indulges in the exploration of the post-modern novel, cancel culture, and cultural worship of “the great man”. One whole explanatory interview scene makes up half the act, where Jack has become cult leader of those obsessed with his novels.

Birch has always boldly experimented with form in her plays. It’s admirable the spans of time she can capture within the form of this play. But, it does not fulfil its full dramatic potential. The ensemble is left commenting on Birch’s own commentaries, and you can feel the audience losing its mental grip. Big, terrifying action strikes in flashes but is not caught in time, thus dissolves. Like her three haunted brothers, Birch searches and searches yet doesn’t sit still to question her theme. A rewrite could remedy this imbalance. The ending, where Jack, Edmund, and Marlow talk for the first time together, makes a fine crescendo to this uneven story. They lament that they never got to know each other, and Jack asks the audience: “Was there anything?” Three men, who possessed everything and disposed their only true connections. And what greater tragedy is there than brother destroying brother?