Romans review – Alice Birch’s epic search for the meaning of masculinity

Almeida theatre, London
We follow three brothers through a Victorian childhood to the 21st-century in this time-bending tale exploring the essence of what it is to be male

What did the Romans do for us? In Alice Birch’s epic about the mess of modern masculinity, they are three brothers born into privilege. “My father wanted only sons,” says Jack Roman (Kyle Soller), kicking off the narrative. Birch plays boldly with time and form, so the boys – questing Jack, voracious Marlow and troubled Edmund – are children in the late Victorian era and emerge into manhood through the succeeding 150 years.

The play is subtitled “a novel” and Soller gives a pointed opening narration of familial decline and an icily abusive boarding school. For the Roman brothers, to become a man is an education in cruelty and a prompt to adventure. Each goes their own way: Jack explores the world, Marlow (Oliver Johnstone) exploits it and Edmund (beautifully played by Stuart Thompson) seeks to escape it entirely. It is only Edmund who tries to retain contact in a unreciprocated tumble of lonely words. All men, we hear, are self-made – though he laments: “I do not know that I have the pieces.”