Small Island: NT Live at Home Review

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre/

Like The Shows Must Go On changed their programme due to the timing with The Wiz, so did the National Theatre react to the current events: their NT Live at Home streaming this week was the critically acclaimed Small Island, adapted by Helen Edmondson from the novel by Andrea Levy, and directed by Rufus Norris.

Funny story: I had every intention of seeing the original screening of it with my Dad. Only we realised we got the day wrong AFTER we got to the cinema.... oooops! So we watched Toy Story 4 instead!

Anyway......

The story follows several characters before and after WW2 in both London and Jamaica: in some ways, it is the story of how Britain became the country we know today. 

It particularly focuses on three different people: Hortense, an uptight and religiously brought-up Jamaican woman: Gilbert, a Jamaican man who fights with the allies in the war and looks to board the Windrush and settle in London after it's over: and Queenie, an English woman who's husband is seemingly lost in the war and rents out rooms to West Indian immigrants in order to survive. 

While I'm on subject, these three were played by Leah Harvey, Gershwyn Eustace Jr and Aisling Loftus respectivly, each of whom giving an incredible, sometimes funny, sometimes broken, and incredibly human throughout. 

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/nationaltheatre/

There's so much discussed in this play, not just racial tensions, but also love, expectations vs reality, trauma and PTSD. 

The dream of seeing "the Mother country" with a dragon living in the Houses of Parliament and leaving warm lighted Jamaica, only for reality to bite Hortense and Gilbert in the butt once they arrive to a small, grey and dimly-lit dirty one-room rent. 

The wide-eyed hopeful and charismatic Queenie dreaming of love and to get away from her Lincolnshire farm, only to end up with a chap with as much personality as a bad school dinner. 

How the new West Indian community was seen by the British: those like Queenie who were open and loving (even if she did sometimes accidentally put her foot in it), or those like her neighbours or the American GIs who were fearful and stunned by them. 

It reminded us how far we had come since then; but also that with the protests that have been happening we still have a long way to go. 

I urge you to go and watch this play. It is one of the most timely things that the National Theatre could have put out at the moment - so I would like to thank them for doing that. Theatre (well, art in general), is a reaction to what's happening around us. An expression for awareness and understanding as well as entertainment. 

I think I'm going to read the book as well (add it to the pile!). 

To watch Small Island, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pac-Furijsw

To watch the show Audio-described: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqbQNnG2onU