Leah Harvey & Shiloh Coke in Small Island, photo credit Brinkhoff Moegenburg, courtesy NT Press Office
Andrea Levy’s novel about the postwar Caribbean-to-Britain migrant experience has been adapted for the stage.
Judith Schrut reviews this powerful, unmissable show, which opened at London’s National Theatre this week.
It was groundbreaking, bestselling and won multiple prizes as a novel and was equally impressive in its 2009 BBC incarnation. Now Small Island, Andrea Levy’s novel about the postwar Caribbean-to-Britain migrant experience, has been adapted into a powerful and timely stage version. It opened this week at the National Theatre to standing ovations and rave reviews. In brief: beg, borrow or stand to see this very special show. Long may it run.
Small Island follows the interconnected lives and stories− the hopes, dreams and harsh reality− of Hortense, Gilbert and Queenie, from the Second World War to 1948. That was the year the SS Empire Windrush first docked at Tilbury carrying over 500 passengers from the West Indies, all British citizens, answering the call to live and work in “The Motherland”. Hortense is a light skinned young woman from rural Jamaica dreaming of life in Britain as a respected teacher, in a house with a smart front door and starched white tablecloth. Gilbert plans to study law and be successful, while Queenie, the independent and open minded daughter of Lincolnshire pig farmers, yearns to escape to a different life.
I was fortunate to be in the first night audience and enjoy outstanding performances of warmth, depth, humanity and hilarity from the show’s large cast of 40, including Leah Harvey as Hortense, Aisling Loftus as Queenie and Gershwyn Eustache Jr as Gilbert. Although the play runs to just over 3 hours, at no point does it drag. Instead, it’s packed with gripping drama, moving scenes and large helpings of music and humour whilst never sugarcoating the darker side of the story: the pervasive and shocking racism, the drabness, disappointment and dashing of hopes, the sheer struggle to survive. Adding to an extraordinary evening were unscripted boos, cheers and gasps throughout from the notably diverse audience.
For me, however, the best moments of the evening were more personal. During interval drinks I met an amazing woman named Judy Griffith. Judy was one of many in the audience with a very personal connection to the show. Her parents came over from Barbados on the Windrush, answering a recruitment ad to come and work as bus drivers in Britain. She and her sister followed a few years later and grew up in Bedfordshire. They are two of the so-called Windrush Generation, children of the Caribbean migrants, who after spending their entire lives living, working, raising families and paying taxes in the UK, have had their status as British citizens questioned and their lives scandalously turned upside down. The fight for their rights and compensation for what they have suffered is ongoing. I look forward to learning more about Judy and others like her in an upcoming BBC2 documentary, airing at 9pm on 25 June 2019.
Small Island is at the Olivier Stage of the National Theatre until 10 August 2019. You can also see the show in cinema screens around the UK (and the world) on 27 June 2019, broadcast live from the stage through the wonder that is NT Live. Tickets and more at
nationalttheatre.org.uk.
