The Miracle of Surviving Pressures to be Male
“I have no self.”
Edmund
Alice Birch’s plays Romans a Novel takes three brothers and over a period of 150 years illustrates how masculinity has evolved, and how it has become what it is today, through the most searing and brutal experiences. It is an important and insightfully demanding watch, looking at male role models and how damage is done to the male psyche.
We start with the eldest Roman brother, Jack played by Kyle Soller, who tells us his father wanted only sons, but he had to get through four dead daughters before he got a son. Jack is seen discussing with his uncle John (Declan Conlon), in military uniform which is bloodstained, what he should do with his life. John speaks of the terror and the joy of war, how this has affected him and what he can no longer do as a result. John encourages Jack to seek out adventure.
Jack’s mother gives birth to a second son, Marlow (Oliver Johnstone) when Jack is seven. Jack is sent away to school and because he persistently wets the bed, he is beaten by the headmaster (Jerry Killick) and ultimately sodomised, we presume, off set. This cruelty cures his bedwetting. Marlow is sent to the same school and subjected to the same treatment making him not speak to his brother for over three months. But whereas Jack never loses his quest for adventure, hereby negating the uniformity of life experience, Marlow becomes a cruel pillar of the establishment, head boy and dispenses sadistic punishments to the younger boys.
For the school scenes we are in the Victorian era. A third son has been born Edmund (Stuart Thompson) and their mother has died giving birth. The father exits their story in the most visceral way leaving the boys to make their own way. Jack joins the army and becomes a writer. Marlow excels at making money, joins the colonial service and in charge of a rubber plantation uses limb severance of men’s wives and children to discipline them into producing more. He exploits nickel, tin, copper, bauxite and gold. Marlow drills for oil and gas and buys up newspapers.
Edmund while his father was alive was confusingly made to wear his mother’s dress and he repeatedly expresses that he has no sense of his own identity. When sent to school he manages to leave which seems a very brave decision. Stuart Thompson has the ability as an actor to convey emotion, to express his own emptiness in an evocative way. “I have no self,” he says repeatedly. Edmund is caught up in a triple murder mystery and sent to prison while Jack writes books about him and succeeds as an author.
Despite shuddering on more than a dozen occasions there are moments when I could laugh: Marlow buys up French spring water and sells it to the English as the champagne of water and I still drink it today! Both Jack and Marlow marry with very different outcomes. Marlow has numerous children with Rosa (Yanexi Enriquez) and Marlow’s wife Clarissa (Agnes O’Casey) is sent to a sanatorium and given Electro-convulsive therapy.
Edmund is often homeless and leads a life on the road. He often doesn’t know where he is or who he is. It is this negation of self which makes him the most interesting of the brothers.
Act Two has a mega-shift to an interview by Esther (Adelle Leonce) of Jack who is now established as the leader of a cult where he encourages everyone to look up and adopt his ideas. The supporting interjections from his acolyte Anna were passive aggressive and everything I thought about what she said about Esther being antagonistic, patronising or confrontational applied to Anna and Jack. I should have been able to laugh but their blatant bullying annoyed me. I started to dislike Jack more than his cruel, capitalist brother Marlow.
This cult has such a bizarre way of interpreting events: a father’s suicide in front of them was an opportunity of value for the children. Marlow has become one of the five richest men in the world. Someone suggests it should be people in the world but Marlow with his sense of supreme masculinity reminds them that it is actually men. Finally when we are allowed to leave the cult dance and sexual ritual, we hear that Jack has been cancelled after his manipulation was exposed.
Edmund runs workshops where they pretend to be woodland creatures, badger eating worms, or foxes but not those woodland sexual gathering called Furries where people dress up to fornicate freely. Marlow orders vodka and ketamine in the restaurant, and sits in a bath of ice three times a day. Jack is confronted by his abandoned daughter Miranda (Agnes O’Casey) whom he has neglected. Edmund pursues body gym workouts.
Finally Jack repeats some of Uncle John’s words in the first scene and we finish on, “Is there yet hope?”
This play is one, more like a novel indeed, which can keep you thinking about it for days. Doing for masculinity what The Years did for femininity and sold out at the Almeida will the West End have the stomach to transfer it? I am left daunted by the number of men who can display sensitivity in view of the burden of their history.
Production Notes
Romans a Novel
Written by Alice Birch
Directed by Sam Pritchard
Cast
Starring:
Oliver Johnstone
Declan Conlon
Jerry Killick
Kyle Soller
Olivier Huband
Stuart Thompson
Yanexi Enriquez
Agnes O’Casey
Adelle Leonce
Creatives
Director: Sam Pritchard
Composer : Jasmine Kent Rodgman
Designer: Merle Hensel
Movement: Hannes Langolf
Lighting Designer: Lee Curran
Sound Designer: Benjamin Grant
Fight Director: Bret Yount
Information
Running Time: Two hours 50 minutes with an interval
Booking until 11th October 2025
Theatre:
Almeida Theatre
Almeida Street
London N1 1TA
Phone: 020 7359 4404
Website: almeida.co.uk
Tube: The Angel
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge
at the Almeida
at the performance
on 18th September 2025
