"She is a sought-after TV writer (on Succession and Normal People) but Birch's blazing plays are known for their form and fury. Her brutal breakout in 2014, Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again, was written in a 72-hour whirl. She wrote her latest, Romans now on at the Almeida in around 10 days. Of course I didn't write' it in 10 days, she clarifies. I wrote it in eight years."
"Romans is a disruptive, expansive exploration of both masculinity and the novel over the last 150 years. The story centres on Jack, played by Kyle Soller, who we first meet as a 10-year-old boy. Each act of young Jack's impossibly stretched life is framed by a different historical literary style: 19th-century novel, modernism, post-modernism. The idea that it's almost impossible, Birch says, is where it feels exciting. Form, for her, always comes first."
Alice Birch crafts formally adventurous plays that probe masculinity and narrative form across historical styles. Romans follows Jack from childhood through stretched episodic acts, each adopting a different literary mode—19th-century realism, modernism and postmodernism—to examine identity and the novel's evolution over 150 years. Birch pairs rapid, concentrated composition episodes with long periods of gestation, describing the writing process as painful and laborious. Her theatre work prioritizes form, staging a central male narrator to interrogate how a man defines himself, while blending theatrical intensity with influences from television and varied reading beyond her comfort zone.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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