★★★☆☆
Jamaica Kincaid’s 1988 essay-novel is a lean 80-page polemic on the subject of Antigua that unsparingly flogs everyone from the Antiguan government and the English colonialists to blasé tourists and the Antiguans themselves. It is the Caribbean tourist board’s worst nightmare. At the Gate Theatre it has become a lean 80-minute polemic in a production that quite sensibly keeps bells and whistles to a minimum to put Kincaid’s impassioned prose front and centre. It is still the Caribbean tourist board’s worst nightmare.
Performed by Cherrelle Skeete and Nicola Alexis — the former begins the play by reading from Kincaid’s novel, book in hand — A Small Place starts as a merciless satire on the white tourist in the Caribbean, pouring scorn on the holidaymakers’