London play paused after theatregoers felt faint during abortion scene

An award-winning play premiering in London had to be stopped for 10 minutes during a preview performance on Monday after several mainly male audience members called for medical assistance after a graphic abortion scene.

The Years, directed by Eline Arbo, is about one woman’s personal and political story, set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing postwar Europe – from advances in reproductive rights to setbacks such as sexism in the workplace.

Based on the autobiography Les Années by the French Nobel prizewinner Annie Ernaux, five actors, including Romola Garai (The Hour and Atonement) and Gina McKee (Our Friends in the North) take on the role of the protagonist at different ages.

The two-hour drama, which opened in Amsterdam in 2022 before its UK premiere at the Almeida theatre on Thursday, features a graphic backstreet abortion scene about halfway through.

During the scene, a man in the front of the stalls indicated that he was feeling faint while those nearby gestured for staff to help. The man was taken outside to the bar area, where he was joined by a handful of other audience members who also said they felt faint.

During the pause, another audience member is reported to have shouted from the circle that the scene “was a disgrace” and “there was no warning”. In a rare move, the actors on stage responded to the man by saying there had been “warnings about the abortion” in the theatre’s guidance.

On the Almeida’s website, in the programme for the play and in emails sent to ticket holders, guidance warns that “The Years contains sexual content, a graphic depiction of abortion, a coerced sexual encounter and blood”.

In a statement, the theatre said: “The performance on Monday of The Years was stopped for 10 minutes so that our front of house team could provide care for an audience member who required assistance. During the stoppage, care was also provided for three other audience members. All audience members were quick to recover after brief assistance.”

The statement added that warnings were in place on “the Almeida website – here , on the booking page, in pre-visit emails, and on front of house signage in the theatre”.

The play was a hit with critics in Amsterdam, with one newspaper calling it “a dazzling history of a time and of a life”. In an interview with the Guardian this month, the actors discussed what Ernaux’s work meant to them and where they thought the feminist project stood today.

“I don’t think it’s in a good place at the moment,” Garai said. “Once you’ve achieved goals on paper – you can have an abortion, you can vote, you are recognised in law as not being property of your husband – you lose a lot of the language … How do we now talk about the kind of subtle ways in which women are disenfranchised?”

The Years is not the first play to have left audience members feeling woozy. In 2016, five people fainted watching graphic scenes of torture, rape and violence in the National Theatre’s Cleansed, while 40 walked out in the show’s first week.

Audience members also walked out of A Little Life in the West End, which featured portrayals of suicide, self-harm and child abuse. One audience member called the adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel, starring James Norton, “possibly the most upsetting, unflinchingly brutal and explicit play I’ve ever seen”.

During a show at Edinburgh festival last year, the performer Eloina Haines had to stop her act to check in on an audience member after they nearly fainted.