Chichester Festival theatre
Tara Tijani and Llewella Gideon are superb in this unblinking portrait of dignity amid moral horror, which follows a Jamaican woman looking back on her life
An additional sting in the tragedy of the death of Andrea Levy at the age of 62 was that an author whose work displays a rare combination of compelling narrative and historical urgency had time for only five novels.
Some comfort can be found in the longevity of that fiction in dramatic adaptation. Small Island, Levy’s 2004 Orange prize-winner about mid-20th century Caribbean emigrants to Britain, achieved the cultural double gold medal of adaptations by the BBC and the National Theatre (where the 2019 production will be revived next year). The Booker-shortlisted The Long Song (2010), set on a 19th-century Jamaican plantation, was also adapted for peak-time TV and now receives a large-cast staging at Chichester.