Review – Small Island, Birmingham Rep, 2nd April 2026

Posted on April 3, 2026 by therealchrisparkle

©Pamela Raith

Helen Edmundson’s adaptation of Andrea Levy’s highly regarded novel opened to great acclaim at London’s National Theatre in 2019; an extended run at the Olivier was planned for 2020 but that darned Covid pandemic had other ideas. However, a new touring production directed by Matthew Xia is underway, co-produced by the Birmingham Rep, Leeds Playhouse and Nottingham Playhouse in association with Actors Touring Company; and it’s no coincidence that these three major cities are hosting this production, as they each owe so much to the contribution made to society by the Windrush generation.

©Pamela Raith

Never having read the book, nor seen the TV adaptation, nor seen the show in 2019, I had no preconceptions as to what was in store, only knowing that it’s 3 hours 20 minutes including an interval. If it’s that long, and it isn’t Shakespeare, it needs to be good to warrant so much material. Fortunately, Small Island most definitely is! Instantly captivating and engrossing, Edmundson takes Levy’s extraordinary characters, from both Jamaica and the UK, and guides us through their individual stories and how they eventually all combine in one ramshackle house in Earl’s Court.

©Pamela Raith

Chekhov’s Three Sisters constantly lament about how life would be so much better if only they could get to Moscow. That feeling of missed opportunity and resentment of others in a more sophisticated setting is often found in drama, and I sensed it very clearly here. The Jamaican people wish for that better life in the mother country, England, where talented and skilled people will be welcomed and rewarded for their hard work with a good wage and a comfortable home. As we see the Windrush set sail for England at the end of the first Act, we know what they don’t know – that life in England will not be a bed of roses, and that the mother country will turn on them decades later. It’s a classic instance of dramatic irony.

©Pamela Raith

Small Island is an immense story, spanning a period of fifteen years. We see the haughty young Hortense, removed from her home to live with a cruel uncle and aunt, but determined to achieve something in life. We meet the spirited Queenie, itching to leave dull Lincolnshire for the bright lights of London. There’s Bernard, the anxious, reserved and emotionally repressed bank clerk who will eventually marry Queenie; and there’s lovable, bumbling Gilbert, desperate to leave Jamaica on the Windrush to gain that guaranteed brighter future in England. Linking them all, whether they know it or not, is Hortense’s charismatic and mischievous cousin Michael, who blossoms from the cruel Jamaican household through boarding school, assertively into the RAF, eventually to emigrate to Canada.

©Pamela Raith

Edmundson’s glorious text, due at least in part to her productive discussions with Andrea Levy before her death, paints a series of totally believable episodic pictures, building up the characters, their influences and their experiences, into fully charged individuals, each with their own virtues and vices; culminating with Hortense and Gilbert living with Queenie and Bernard in London. Packed with emotion, some of the problems that the characters face make you catch your breath; no spoilers, but I’m sure Mrs Chrisparkle had to wipe away the odd moment of eye-moisture.

©Pamela Raith

It’s also fearless in its portrayal of racism, in all its forms, causing a modern audience frequently to gasp in horror at some of the language and attitudes. Racism today – I’m guessing – has evolved into more covert and more institutionalised, perhaps less delivered in person but more savage online, to reflect our Internet age. But Small Island shows it tossed around unapologetically, almost ostentatiously and gleefully, and it’s truly horrifying to witness. There is a trigger warning about some of the language and content and, frankly, it’s worth taking seriously.

©Pamela Raith

Despite the gravity of its subject matter, the play is also incredibly funny, with plenty of genuinely laugh out loud moments, often in the face of appalling racism. The ghastly Bernard, to whom Queenie is regrettably married, is irredeemably racist; towards the end of the play, you think he’s going to repent for his error, when Gilbert boldly confronts him with why his prejudices are all wrong. He starts by replying I’m sorry… and what follows has the audience in hysterics; that’s just one example of the tremendous combination of text, performance and direction.

©Pamela Raith

Simon Kenny’s superb set shrinks the main acting area of the huge Birmingham Rep stage so effectively that you barely notice, with informative use of newsreel projection to separate the scenes, a first Act that moodily drifts in and out of all sorts of different locations, and a second Act firmly rooted in the inescapable stark comfortlessness of Queenie’s house – basic decent accommodation for her and a filthy decrepit garret for Gilbert and Hortense upstairs. Luke Bacchus’ striking musical motifs pepper the high emotional moments, always enhancing the production and never distracting.

©Pamela Raith

The cast are superb throughout. With some cast members playing two or three characters, the clarity of the storytelling is fantastic. Even the minor roles are outstanding. Paul Hawkyard’s portrayal of Bernard’s shellshocked father Arthur is both deeply moving and frequently comical, stealing every scene with his minutely observed gait and facial expressions. Marcia Mantack is a joy as the kindly Miss Jewel, always looking out for young Hortense’s best interests. Rosemary Boyle is hilarious as the sensationalist Mrs Ryder, desperate for some physicality in her life as she volunteers to feel the full blast of a Jamaican hurricane. Zoe Lambert’s beneficent Aunt Dorothy and nasty-minded Miss Todd are both brilliantly observed portrayals of outspoken and forthright women, albeit coming at life from very different angles.

©Pamela Raith

Everal A Walsh gives us a horrifyingly strict Mr Philip and then surprises us with a delightfully mischievous cameo as Gilbert’s neighbour Kenneth. André Squire gives a bright and cheeky performance as Gilbert’s critical brother Elwood, Mara Allen a wickedly funny Celia, and there’s excellent further support from Toby Webster, Phil Yarrow and Jordan Laviniere.

©Pamela Raith

In the main roles, Rhys Stephenson is perfectly cast in his professional stage debut as the charismatic Michael; he has terrific stage presence, always gaining the audience’s confidence and approval, and, boy, does he know how to wear a suit – great work again from Simon Kenny’s costume design. Mark Arends excels in the difficult task of portraying Bernard, who develops from emotional weakling to tyrannical husband with total credibility. One could easily see how he could be played as a pantomime villain, but this is a very intelligent portrayal of a self-centred, emotionally blighted individual, to whom racism comes naturally and for whom arrogant reputation is equally important.

©Pamela Raith

Daniel Ward gives an engagingly robust and heartwarming performance as the honourable, but frequently inept, Gilbert; always ready to lend a hand, to think the best of people, slow to ire, but when push comes to shove, he knows exactly the right thing to do. Bronté Barbé is excellent as always, as the optimistic but realistic Queenie, naturally decent to others but tragically aware of the limits that society imposes. And Anna Crichlow is outstanding as Hortense, a naturally refined person who’s learned everything from the school of hard knocks, and who’s not afraid of doing hard work to get what she wants, but she has high standards that she – and moreover Gilbert – must achieve.

©Pamela Raith

Impressive storytelling, constantly engaging and engrossing; it was a delight to see how the audience reacted so vociferously at some key moments, which is an indication of just how involved everyone was with the story unfolding on the stage. Three hours twenty minutes? They fly by. An important and beautifully constructed play, given a first-rate production by Matthew Xia and uniformly superb performances. I can’t recommend it strongly enough. The tour continues at the Birmingham Rep until 18^th April and then moves on to the Nottingham Playhouse from 28^th April to 16^th May. Don’t miss it!

Five Alive, Let Theatre Thrive!

Review – Tambo and Bones, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 11th March 2025

Posted on March 12, 2025 by therealchrisparkle

Dave Harris’ Tambo and Bones takes us, in three scenes, on a five hundred year adventure from an American Minstrel show, to a hip-hop gig in the present, then onto a futuristic lecture, examining black identity and the black experience in creative art. Ambitious, or what?! One hand it feels very innovative and experimental; on the other it also borrows from the Theatre of the Absurd, and there are a several nods to other productions that attempted similar stylistic presentations. Either way, it’s undoubtedly a subversive piece of theatre which provokes a variety of reactions and will leave you either exhilarated or exasperated – or quite possibly both.

In the same way that Harlequin and Columbine were set characters in Commedia dell’Arte, Tambo and Bones were roles in nineteenth-century minstrel shows; Tambo played the tambourine, and Bones played the bones (obvs) – a kind of castanet. The shows were performed by white actors in blackface; it seems bizarre and offensive now, but my parents’ generation adored TV’s Black and White Minstrel Show which continued until 1978, with a stage production touring until 1987. As a child I just found it freaky.

The first scene shows Tambo and Bones (sans either tambo or bones) exchanging ideas, challenges, interacting with the audience, against a fake, surrealistic landscape including two (movable) trees. This shouted Waiting for Godot to me all the way through; two tramp-like characters who apparently have no other existence apart from in each other’s lives, without much happening. Trees play a part in Godot too; and Beckett’s Pozzo and Lucky, a ruthless autocrat with a mistreated servant who interrupt proceedings, are here replaced by the playwright (a puppet) upon whom they deliver vengeful violence. Two Characters in Search of an Author, perhaps?

The second scene takes us to a gig where Tambo and Bones are high-achieving, influential hip hop musicians, presenting us with the two elements of creative drive: wanting to change the world with your art, and wanting to make lots of money out of it. Shakespeare wouldn’t disagree. But their fame and fortune gets out of hand as they start – unwittingly or otherwise – to cause the overthrow of the world political status quo.

Four hundred years in the future, our actors, Daniel Ward and Clifford Samuel, come out of character and present as themselves, reflecting on how the first half of the show exhausted them with all that rap, and delivering a history of how Tambo and Bones became the religious icons/cult heroes/political philosophers that have led us to our current, blissful state. Throughout the play there are additional nuances of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Hamilton and even The Book of Mormon, in its clever portrayal of how an ordinary person can end up being a semi-God.

The language is deliberately divisive, with endless repetitions of the N word; individual audience members will react to that however they see fit. The play asks many questions about race and identity, and what’s fake and what’s real, as well as the responsibilities of a performing artist, and how an audience responds to what it sees on stage. It doesn’t offer answers to these questions – they have to be provided by you.

The ending is especially subversive, but perhaps not unique; I was reminded of DV8’s Bound to Please, where a cast member rounded on the audience for photographing the show, and Peter Handke’s Offending the Audience, where taped cheering forces the audience out of the auditorium at the end of the play without their having the chance to have their reaction heard. Neither of those happen here, but it’s an equally disturbing and unsettling ending.

Clifford Samuel and Daniel Ward give hugely committed performances that show off their terrific versatility, with great clowning and musical skills as well as being superb actors. Incredibly likeable, their enthusiasm spreads all around the auditorium, galvanising the audience into frequently responding to them; this is perhaps not a show for shrinking violets. Hats off also to Jaron Lammens and Dru Cripps as the X-Bots in the final scene; Mr Cripps’ ability to sit on an invisible chair leaves you speechless.

Each scene culminates in acts of violence. It’s a personal thing, but violence is always turn-off for me, even against a puppet, or a masked DJ, or a cartoon President, or a robot that protests it’s a real person. For me, Tambo and Bones is an essentially pessimistic play, despite the upbeat air that permeates all its scenes; if violence is always the outcome, the future for the world is bleak. There’s a very significant event that happens between the second and third scenes which I won’t mention, but is an act of violence that not even Hitler achieved.

The fact that the audience just drifts off at the end of the play, as and when they’re ready, is a theatrical not with a bang but a whimper moment, leaving you dissatisfied with the conclusion. But that’s not the only reason that, despite all its extraordinary qualities, I can’t find myself enamoured with this play. If you don’t “get” Godot style interaction, you’ll find the first scene dull (Mrs Chrisparkle nodded off). I found the final scene dull too – in fact, I stopped listening to the narrative because the actions of the X-Bots was much more interesting. And for all its bold decisions and quirky structure, I couldn’t stop thinking about how, deep down, nothing is new. Perhaps I’m just insufficiently connected to American culture.

Nevertheless, if you haven’t seen anything like this before, this will be a shock to the system, and if you like to be challenged in the theatre, this is definitely for you. After it leaves Northampton, the tour continues to Liverpool, Manchester, Coventry, back to its spiritual home in Stratford East, and finally to Leeds in May.