Small Island runs in our Quarry theatre until 28 March. It is a Leeds Playhouse, Birmingham Rep and Nottingham Playhouse production in association with Actors Touring Company.

“I was a giant living on land no bigger than the soles of my shoes. Everywhere I turn I gazed on sea. The palm trees that tourists thought rested so beautiful on every shore were my prison bars. Horizons my tormenting borders.” – Gilbert

Andrea Levy’s story plays out on the most epic of scales: world-shattering wars across oceans, great journeys and upheaval in pursuit of dreams, life-changing decisions – and also the most intimate: a deep emotional connection, an acknowledgement of humanity, a shared moment of understanding.

Act One is constructed of memories, dreams, chance encounters, a series of formative moments. The scenes are expansive and full of life and movement. Gradually our protagonists outgrow the confines of their families’ and societal expectations and search for a new sense of belonging; their horizons broaden and beckon them towards new possibilities.

Like the text, the visual world of the production also exists between the naturalistic and the poetic. The action is tethered to a simple wooden stage – a room, a boat, an island – but slips easily across time, space and imagination. As we learn about the characters backstories, visual fragments of scenes are overlayed to evoke location and period: a shard of a cinema screen, a glimpse of a Jamaican schoolhouse, a suggestion of a British sweetshop – but these are always set against the constrained boundaries of the ever-present horizon.

Over the course of the first act, everything that anchors our protagonists to the separate lives that they know and understand – to their islands – is gradually removed until finally they all set sail towards their new futures. A raft carried along on the current, exposed to the elements, full of promise, wonder and possibility.

In Act Two, possibility is replaced by reality. Locations are rendered more fully; the optimistic, light filled expanses of Act One cede to the drab, faded density of the city and the weight of post-war life in Britain. Set among the debris of post-war London, we find Queenie’s house on Nevern Street. A determined survivor, an unlikely beacon of hope in a shattered landscape.

Here we find lives stacked on top of each other, our protagonists often struggling to recognise the common ground they occupy in a rapidly changing world. While their stories become inextricably intertwined, the dreams they all dreamt for themselves quickly tarnish.

But beneath all this weight, hope remains ever present. Promises are broken, dreams are shattered by reality, struggles are endured, but always determination and hope – for a better life, for love, acknowledgement, and for deserved opportunity.

And in the centre of it all stands a home, an island, where these characters are woven together, where they dream and strive – a hopeful raft in unpredictable waters.