A Year and a Day to Remember

Posted on 20th June 2025

Christopher Sainton-Clark first appears on an otherwise empty stage and then immediately breaks the fourth wall to explain that he going to tell us the story of his death. Given that he was standing in front of us I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say this is just one of many devices he uses to grabs our attention in a whirlwind story that combined the trajectory of David Nicholls One Day with the romance of Audrey Niffenegger’s time traveller.

What follows is the tale of Nathan, a young man living in 1958’s Ireland, albeit for just one more day before an encounter with a bright light sends him into 1959, a process that then repeats itself, so that he only pops up in other people’s live one day a year. It’s an audacious premise and Sainton-Clark has a lot of fun twisting and turning the plot of what is essentially a shaggy dog story about a botched robbery, his protagonist as surprised as the audience at what happens next. Thankfully, Sainton-Clark doesn’t feel obliged to explain how or why this happens because A Year and a Day is really about is being confronted by the consequences of your actions, being unable to influence those consequences, and yet being able to escape them. Sainton-Clark is asking us to consider the nihilistic effect of being the passive viewer of other people’s lives that flash by as we impotently look on, forever disappearing when we should be staying.

His decision to present in rhyming couplets heightened the sense of the surreal, though it says much for his naturalistic delivery that I was ten minutes in before I noticed. Otherwise, there were few theatrical flourishes, the evening instead relying on his considerable talent for telling a story in an economic, yet riveting, way. Once again, the Corn Hall’s brave decision to stage provocative, challenging theatre offered up a bold, inventive evening to remember.