After Small Island took over the National Theatre in 2019, Helen Edmundson’s epic adaptation heads back to London. Small Island tickets are available on London Theatre now.
The Small Island play is based on Andrea Levy’s 2004 novel of the same name. Small Island dramatises the lives of those who associated with the Jamaican diaspora in 1940s Britain, through World War Two and beyond. 1948 marked an important year in the history of British Jamaican individuals too — HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948. As the play explores the beginnings of the Windrush generation, audiences discover more about the tangled histories of Jamaica and the UK.
During the Small Island play, audiences meet Hortense, a prim woman who dreams of becoming a teacher in England, but considers everything with a rose-tinted, English gaze. She's married to Gilbert who holds a laid back approach to living in Europe, but feels pressured by his wife to behave in a certain way.
This husband and wife meet Queenie and Bernard, who have a similar dynamic. Queenie Bligh is named after Queen Victoria and "Blighty", an archaic term to describe soldiers' wounds during World War Two. Meanwhile her husband, Bernard, behaves in ways which would be considered racist. The three-hour play documents their lives and thoughts in an intricate fashion, illuminating the impact of living as a Jamaican in 1940s Britain.
When Andrea Levy created Small Island, she didn't intend to focus so heavily on war. In a Caribbean Beat article, Levy said: "When I started Small Island I didn’t intend to write about the war... I realised that 1948 was so very close to the war that nothing made sense without it... Caribbean people got left out of the telling of that story, so I am attempting to put them back into it. But I am not telling it from only a Jamaican point of view. I want to tell stories from the black and white experience. It is a shared history."
Rufus Norris directs Small Island, which returns to the Olivier Theatre in spring 2022.
Tickets to Small Island are available now. Book your Small Island tickets on London Theatre today.
