Andrea Levy’s Small Island comes to the stage in a powerful new adaptation by Helen Edmundson, directed by Olivier Award-winning theatre-maker Matthew Xia.
Set between Jamaica and Britain, Small Island traces the intertwined lives of four characters whose experiences reflect the social and political shifts of the mid-twentieth century. Hortense and Gilbert, newly married and full of expectation, leave Jamaica after the Second World War in search of dignity, opportunity and respect in Britain. What they encounter instead is a society struggling to reconcile its wartime rhetoric of unity with the realities of prejudice, housing shortages and exclusion.
Alongside them are Queenie, an Englishwoman who defies social convention, and her husband Bernard, whose worldview is shaped by imperial attitudes and the trauma of war. As their lives intersect in post-war London, the play explores the tensions between belonging and unbelonging, hope and disappointment, and the personal cost of historical change.
This new staging draws on music, movement and striking visual storytelling to evoke both the warmth of Jamaica and the austerity of 1940s Britain. Calypso rhythms sit alongside scenes of everyday struggle, grounding the story in lived experience rather than nostalgia. The production offers a reflective examination of migration, identity and resilience, asking how shared histories continue to shape modern Britain.
A co-production between Leeds Playhouse, Birmingham Rep and Nottingham Playhouse, in association with Actors Touring Company.
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