ROMANS: A NOVEL
Almeida Theatre
★★★½
“Birch’s experimentation in form is carefully considered and exciting”
Written by Alice Birch, ‘Romans, A Novel’ is, first and foremost, an ambitious play. Spanning about 150 years, it traces the lives of the three improbably slow-aging Roman brothers. It explores themes including masculinity, trauma, individualism, and grief, paying homage to the novel as an enduring literary form all the while. Its approach is of the epic kind, unusual for our day and age, while its exploration of masculinity could not be more topical. Still, ‘Romans’ does not manage to live up to its full potential.
The story is set in three eras, which are matched by the novelistic form roughly dominant at the time depicted. The first half of the play takes place in the first four decades of the 20th century, tracing the lives of the brothers in a somewhat chronological and realist fashion. World War Two features only as a break both in the play and in style – the postwar era and present day which feature after the interval take on a much more fragmentary and satirical tone in homage to modernist and postmodernist literary traditions. Under Sam Pritchard’s direction, the cast jumps effectively between these different styles, while Agnes O’Casey (as the eldest brother’s wife and daughter) and Stuart Thompson (as Edmund, the youngest Roman brother) offer particularly vivid standout performances.
Birch’s experimentation in form is carefully considered and exciting but, beyond the stylistic, her joint engagement with the novel and masculinity feels incomplete. Literary scholars have argued that the eighteenth-century origins of the novel are intertwined with the rise of individualism and a modern understanding of the self. The novel’s fascination with the individual resounds in the selfishness that characterises masculinity in the play, something illustrated by Marlow (Oliver Johnstone) and Jack’s (Kyle Soller) obsession with professional success and disregard for their wives and children. But much of the effectiveness of a novel depends on the strength of its narrative voice and the compelling idiosyncrasies of its characters. This is something Birch’s play lacks. By dealing mostly in fleeting but familiar male types – the cruel boarding school master, the druggy cult guru, the obnoxious billionaire –, ‘Romans’ feels like a slideshow of performed masculinities rather than a more fundamental, psychological exploration of what produces them. The most compelling character is the youngest Roman brother, Edmund (Stuart Thompson), who fails to live up to expectations of manliness, but his story is given frustratingly little time on stage. As such, Birch fails to fully convey an original take on her subject matter in this two-and-a-half-hour whirlwind of a story.
Despite this, it’s a compelling watch: the staging is gorgeous, with Merle Hensel’s stunning revolving platform being used to great effect in combination with movement director Hannes Langlof’s careful choreography. Lee Curran’s moody lighting provides an especially atmospheric quality to the first half of the play and, together with Benjamin Grant’s sound design, greatly aids the depiction of a tragic suicide in the first act.
Ambitious and sprawling, Alice Birch’s play is a fascinating experiment in form, though perhaps this is also its weak point. While its engagement with masculinity ultimately feels more descriptive than analytical, ‘Romans’ is an exciting watch.
ROMANS: A NOVEL
Almeida Theatre
Reviewed on 18th September 2025
by Lola Stakenburg
Photography by Marc Brenner
Previously reviewed at this venue:
A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN | ★★★★★ | June 2025
1536 | ★★★★★ | May 2025
RHINOCEROS | ★★★★ | April 2025
OTHERLAND | ★★★★ | February 2025
WOMEN, BEWARE THE DEVIL | ★★★★ | February 2023
