Coming to England, review: a wasted opportunity to show how Floella Benjamin so spectacularly beat the odds

Based on Floella Benjamin’s childhood memoir first published in 1997, Coming to England is billed as one of the highlights of Birmingham Rep’s new season, celebrating the theatre’s 50th anniversary in its current home at Centenary Square. Programming the play, in what is effectively his first season, must have been a no-brainer for artistic director Sean Foley who took over as artistic director in 2019.

A musical based on a bestselling book, now part of the national curriculum, written by Benjamin who is adored by and has attained national treasure status for millions of people who grew up watching her on BBC’s iconic Play School, is almost certainly guaranteed to fill the theatre’s main 825-seat auditorium night after night during its run.

Documenting Benjamin’s childhood in Trinidad, and her move to Britain – with its accompanying shock of racism – in 1960 as part of the Windrush generation when she was 10 years old, Coming to England starts promisingly with Benjamin’s investiture as Baroness Benjamin of Beckenham. The performers burst on stage to sing in this captioned performance with the exaggerated gestures of children’s TV presenters, and the piece doesn’t shy away from diving directly into the casual, pervasive racism that black people encounter every day – “Your kind shouldn’t be living in this country” – within the first few minutes.

But there’s also an immediate incongruity for the audience, because all the ensemble, bar one actor, depicting racist kids are black. Even if the actors are doubling up as other characters, it feels like an odd choice that puts the performance on the wrong foot right from the beginning.

This effect is compounded by a first act shifting swiftly from song to song in which Benjamin’s interiority is given short or no shrift, and which is inexplicably entirely dedicated Benjamin’s childhood in Trinidad. The real story is, of course, who is Floella Benjamin behind that smile that seems perennially pinned in place, and just how did she, a black woman, carve such a stellar career in entertainment, business and politics against all the odds? A glimpse of an answer is offered in a song – Nat King Cole’s Smile – dedicated to it, but by the end of the show we are none the wiser as Paula Kay, who plays Benjamin, asserts, “My smile is my armour and nothing can penetrate it.”

This may be the first time a Windrush story has been told from a child’s perspective, as Benjamin claimed when she appeared on stage after the first-night show, but the trouble is it treads the same generic and frustratingly safe ground covered by adult Windrush stories too. Tussling with racism is inevitable in these kinds of stories, but that stalwart hackneyed trope – “No Dogs, No Irish, No Coloureds” – of stories about race in Britain even makes an appearance.

It is, of course, essential to tell theatrical stories of how black people were enticed to the “mother country” in the wake of the Second World War, but I was hankering after, as I’m sure other audience members of all stripes are too, the specificity of detail that demonstrates that black British stories are just as varied as those of their white counterparts. It feels like a wasted opportunity to tell the real story of how the indomitable Benjamin became the multi-hyphenate force of influence that she is today.

Until 16 April. Tickets: 0121 236 4455; Birmingham Rep