Theatre review: Small Island

This time last year Rufus Norris strayed out of his comfort zone for his big Olivier stage production with notoriously disastrous consequences, but he's back to much more familiar territory now for a big emotional, political epic that spans years, continents and clashing cultures. Helen Edmundson adapts Andrea Levy's Small Island, whose story about the Windrush generation has become topical again in recent years. Its three narrators are initially separated by an ocean, but chance and the Second World War will throw them together in life-changing ways: First up we meet Hortense (Leah Harvey,) a teacher in a remote Jamaican village whose romantic feelings about her cousin Michael (CJ Beckford) are crushed so abruptly it leaves her cold, spiky and pragmatic to the point of calculating; while she stays in Jamaica, Michael goes to England to join the war effort.

Meanwhile in Lincolnshire Queenie (Aisling Loftus) gets the opportunity to move from her family's farm to her aunt's shop in London, and she likes the city so much she's willing to marry someone she doesn't love just to stay there.

When her husband Bernard (Andrew Rothney) joins the War her path crosses that of a couple of Jamaican airmen including Michael, and the third narrator, Gilbert (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr,) who brings the circle of characters together when he returns to Jamaica and meets Hortense. Small Island fulfils its promise as an epic, and not just in running time (although it wouldn’t have hurt to have followed the example of last year’s Antony and Cleopatra and had a 7pm start time – add in a delay caused by a technical fault and tonight it was nearly 11pm before the show let out.) Although it has a transatlantic sweep Edmundson makes sure this feels like a detailed character piece, with Hortense and Queenie each getting nearly half an hour at the start of the show to properly set up their backstories and characters.

And it doesn’t feel like time wasted as we follow the characters through the War in the long first act, which ends with the departure of the Empire Windrush for England. Having previously captured such a broad sweep (the way figures in Jon Driscoll’s projections bleed into reality is very nicely done) Katrina Lindsay’s set now conjures claustrophobia as well as the Olivier stage can manage, with almost every scene taking place in Queenie’s Earl’s Court house, either in the ground floor room she keeps for herself, or the one upstairs she lets out to Gilbert and Hortense – now in a marriage of convenience so they could both move to the UK. Inevitably we follow the racism they encounter, but it’s also interesting to see how the play casually lays bare the misogyny everywhere – whether black or white, in England or Jamaica, the women in the play have to take it as read that men will make unwanted sexual comments to them almost constantly.

Levy and Edmundson have steered clear of judging their characters for their attitudes, meaning their racism is exposed as a societal problem rather than a character flaw. Bernard has the most overtly racist language but he’s never seen as an out-and-out villain, while even Queenie, who puts up with abuse from her neighbours for having black tenants, frequently uses language that’s offensive to modern ears. The only white character not to say anything racist is Bernard’s lovable father Arthur (David Fielder,) who hasn’t said anything since getting shell-shock in WWI (and even he manages to mistake Gilbert for Michael.) It often deals with bleak issues and the ending gets a bit too far into melodrama but Small Island is a moving story brought atmospherically to the stage.

Small Island by Helen Edmundson, based on the novel by Andrea Levy, is booking in repertory until the 10th of August at the National Theatre’s Olivier.

Running time: 3 hours 20 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg.