If Small Island appears to have taken a place in the National Theatre’s pantheon already, it is with good reason. And if it is part of a drive to put bums on seats, no matter: it is without doubt the highest calibre of guaranteed hit shows.
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The play’s running time is three hours and five minutes, but it is a testament to the acting, staging, and indeed the script that not one of those minutes hangs heavily.
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The achievement of Helen Edmundson's adaptation and Rufus Norris's sensitive, fluent direction is that of all great art: it makes its points through its characters rather than by imposing arguments on top of them.
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But while Leemore Marrett Jr and Leonie Elliott deliver winning performances as the Jamaican husband and wife Gilbert and Hortense, there’s not much room for subtlety in this panoramic tale of 1940s immigration.
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Yet Small Island’s great triumph is to present that history as very much a living thing. The racism Gilbert encounters while working in a post room still stings from across the decades.
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