Five Years, a new play currently touring the country by Birmingham-based writer Hayley Davis, was borne out of a sad but probably unsurprising piece of national research: a significant portion of women surveyed would give up five years of their lives in exchange for what they deemed the ideal body.
Our fictionalised version takes place in a world where this wish is just about to be realised, thanks to some cutting-edge technology and a somewhat railroaded volunteer, Yasmin (Lauren Poveda), a plus-sized thirty-something woman disillusioned with the mediocre path her life has taken.
We meet Yasmin in the final hours before the procedure - the first of its kind - is to take place. Everything is set, besides the dotting of some i’s and crossing of some t’s - literally, in fact, as a technician for the firm, played by Davis herself, needs to obtain some key signatures from Yasmin before they can proceed.
The set is a marvel, white spa shelving lined with neat white towels and various lotions and potions, illuminated in a cool, oceanic blue-green. In the centre of the stage, there’s a pod, roughly the size and shape of a telephone booth. On it, holograms are projected throughout the show, along with some voiceover and sound effects (children splashing at a swimming pool, for example) to enrich Yasmin’s stories further.
Before Yasmin starts a new recollection the screen reads ‘Extracting Memories…’ in a sort of ultra-soft sci-fi touch, which the show is fond of.
Beyond the prerecorded voiceovers, the play is a two-hander between Poveda and Davis, although it is mainly compiled out of a series of recollections from Yasmin about growing up fat, and the insidious, wearying nature of fatphobia and other microaggressions.
This might sound heavy - but I wish it had been heavier. The play is billed as a ‘comedy-drama’ but the comedy felt stagey and predictable, with over-the-top snipes from the fatphobic technician, and woolly self-deprecation a la Bridget Jones from Yasmin. It does hammer home the point that Yasmin is insecure, but recollections Yasmin shares - about getting fat-shamed in swim class, teased by her classmates, struggling to find professional clothing that doesn’t look either frumpy or provocative on her abundant curves, a long-term relationship with a man who seems like a caricature of a self-absorbed manchild, and more - feel like methodically generated anecdotes. I found Yasmin to be more of a compilation of women’s stories, than a fully realised character. The technician as well felt like a strawman of thin privilege, and made me wonder why the story didn’t instead focus on Yasmin conversing with the actual creator of the technology, which would have perhaps left more room for nuance.
Often 5 Years feels like it was written to impress, rather than express. While obviously created with only the best intentions, it plays rather like an extended educational on how all bodies are good bodies. We learn that fat people can have eating disorders too, and that capitalism is the fuel in the tank of body dysmorphia. The holographic imagery looked distorted and the voice recording sadly added nothing. It was a bold and fascinating idea, but ultimately it took away from the world the actors' words were painting.
The actress playing Yasmin and I are roughly the same size, sometimes called ‘small fat’. For me, what this means is while no one would call me thin, and I find my body underrepresented across the media, in my experience I’ve been immune from a lot of the vitriol my larger peers get just for existing. Weight stigma has been widely recorded in workplaces, and doctors' offices throughout this country. As have fat folks getting heckled in the street, not fitting into chairs and booths at restaurants and cinemas, being blamed for the strain on the NHS, told they're glorifying obesity for daring to look happy, and being unable to buy affordable clothing because nearly all high street brands fail to carry their sizes. Feeling the constant pressure to prove their health to sneering commentators who act like it’s the only thing that makes you worthy of dignity. Having to be better dressed, smarter, and more charming just to counter the hateful stereotypes of loud, lazy, unhygienic and stupid hanging over them all the time.
Obviously, confidence and self-love alone won’t change these challenges. Fatphobia is an insidious, ruinous prejudice that can be fixed, through better education and representation, but not just more self-confidence.
Who would blame a person contending with that for sacrificing 5 years in exchange for widespread basic human decency towards themselves?
With this in mind, the ending in particular irked me, with a sudden self-satisfied denouement about how these body standards are in fact, subjective, and women are wasting endless time, energy and money trying to meet them. What irked me about it wasn’t that it was untrue, of course, it is true. And to the play's credit, also true and captured here is how those standards cause those who can’t meet them to turn their frustration inwards, in a toxic cocktail of self-blame and shame.
But what irked me is that at the end of the play Yasmin triumphantly presents these discoveries as a reason to resist the procedure, when to me, they sound like a pretty compelling - if sobering - argument for going through with it.
That said, the acting was polished, and the play was kindhearted and well-meaning. Those with a background in body positivity or fat activism will find nothing new here, but if it’s not a topic you’ve visited before, this might be an eye-opening avenue in.