Small Island - Leeds Playhouse ★★★★★

Starting in a hurricane, like many an epic tale, Small Island storms on to the stage at Leeds Playhouse, with rolling and cresting waves of dreams and aspirations as well as crashing disappointments.

First brought to the stage in 2019 by the National Theatre, Small Island, Helen Edmonson’s play, adapted from Andrea Levy’s novel, is the story of the Windrush generation and their integration into British society. Following closely the lives of Jamaican migrants Hortense and Gilbert and also of English husband and wife Bernard and Queenie, whose opinions on immigration are at odds with each other. This play explores every viewpoint unflinchingly.

Spanning the 1940s and set in both Jamaica and England, the contrasts between the two island nations are obvious and profound. Hortense (Anna Crichlow) is being brought up by severe and strict relations, having been given up by her mother. She is rescued only by the friendship of their son, Michael. He first leaves for boarding school and then joins up to fight in the war for the mother country in the Royal Air Force. This eventually provides a reason for Hortense to follow, even if not with him.

A parallel story finds Lincolnshire farm girl Queenie living and working in London before not really falling for Bernard, whom she marries to avoid having to move back to a life working for her father.

Queenie is played magnificently by Bronté Barbé, with fantastic comic timing and great emotional depth. A huge character, Queenie is the most unlikely fit for Bernard (Mark Arends), an uptight, reserved and essentially damaged and difficult only son of a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War. Persuaded, then, that a life with him might be preferable to one back home, a fairly excruciating relationship ensues, satisfying neither of them, until Bernard feels obliged to offer his rather pitiful self to the war effort and joins up.

Crichlow plays the intense and determined Hortense beautifully. She is no shrinking violet waiting for a man to ‘look after her’ but is prepared to follow her own path. She enables her best friend’s fiancé, Gilbert, to board the Windrush by paying for his passage on the proviso that he will instead marry her and send for her once he’s settled.

Life in post-war Britain is certainly not what either of the young Jamaicans had envisaged – the Houses of Parliament, like a fairy castle with dragons, tea in china cups or even having their own doorbell. Instead, they find the motherland to be filled with the debris of war, grubby and grimy and with signs everywhere that those empire soldiers, who fought willingly alongside the British, are no longer welcome.

Simon Kenny’s design, with a huge central revolve, is beautifully complemented by Ciarán Cunningham’s lighting and Adrienne Quartly’s soundscapes. This production is staged so that both Jamaica and England are fully fleshed out: great warm lighting and tropical soundscapes firmly establish the Caribbean, whilst contrasting grey tones, rubble and peeling paper more accurately depict London.

Matthew Xia has directed this huge and now politically familiar story, painting it so richly and with such attention to detail and enabling superb characterisations from every member of the large cast. Whilst the production is also epic in length, this is one which will live with you vividly, well after the final, rapturous curtain.