Andrea Levy’s epic, Orange Prize-winning novel bursts
to new life on the Olivier stage. A company of 40 tells a story which
journeys from Jamaica to Britain, through the Second World War to
1948 – the year the HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury.
Adapted for the stage by Helen Edmundson, Small
Island follows three intricately connected stories. Hortense yearns
for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a
lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots. Hope and
humanity meet stubborn reality as the play traces the tangled history
of Jamaica and the UK.