Small Island

Adapted by Helen Edmundson from the novel by Andrea Levy

National Theatre

This great production of Small Island at the National Theatre takes the audience through a roller coaster of emotions.

There is a constant undercurrent of humour, often born out of adversity. But then the cutting racism that has the audience drawing breath.

The impact of de-humanisation, treating other human beings as animals or worse. The physical revulsion of the very English husband Bernard (Andrew Rothney), returning from the war at the sight of a black person in his house, let alone anywhere near his wife.

The production no doubt hits parts of the audience differently, depending on the demographic. Those around in the 1950s and 60s get that shudder, as they remember just what it was like with the no blacks, no irish or no dogs notices in the bedsit windows.

Those same generations will then take a reality check, as to why we are returning to those times today - having to some degree taken large steps forward since.

Younger audience members will link the experience to the poisonousness of the immigration debate over recent years. The dehumanisation of individuals, who have become the other.

The plight of the migrant, leaving home to find a new life, Dick Whittington like, on the streets of London. Only then to be disappointed, finding discrimination, a lack of value for their talents and a generally hostile attitude.

One pertinent part of the play comes when Gilbert (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr)  is about to go off to fight in World War II. His brother Elwood (Johann Myers) is a rebel seeking independence for Jamaica, seeing the war as a good chance to revolt while Britain’s back is turned.

Gilbert and the other black soldiers go off to serve King and country, only later be rewarded by being treated like dirt by resentful indigenous workers.

This Small Island production is all the more apposite today, overhung as it has been by the Windrush scandal and the reverberations of Brexit.

The performances are outstanding from Leah Harvey (Hortense) and Gershwyn Eustache Jnr (Gilbert) holding the centre, as they move through a myriad of emotions and experiences.

Andrea Levy’s book is ofcourse a brilliant account but somehow this adaptation takes the work, on making it very much a contemporary piece, reflective for Britain today.

A play well worth seeing, probably again and again, given the myriad layers of revelation and understanding contained therein.