Last Updated on 5 February 2025 by Colette
This post features gifted experiences
When I asked Amy if she wanted to come to the theatre on Wednesday night instead of going to scouts, she confidently answered that, yes she’d like to come to the theatre please before even asking what we were going to see! I started to explain that it was a play about a little black girl and her family who had moved to England when she exclaimed, “Oooh like the Windrush? We’ve learned about that!’ and then, when I googled to see exactly when Floella Benjamin had come to England, Amy saw her picture and exclaimed ‘Oh Dame Floella Benjamin? We’ve learned about her!’ so she was really excited about going to see Coming to England and already had quite a bit of background knowledge.
I on the other hand, came to the performance with a heart full of bias having been brought up on a diet of Floella Benjamin on Playschool, adoring her beaming smile and infectious enthusiasm which lit up the television screen of my youth. Shamefully I knew little else about Floella Benjamin – about her childhood or her career beyond children’s television but I have been fully schooled this evening in just what an incredible woman she is.
The stage is set as an enormous old fashioned television set, complete with a knob to change the channel and a healthy dose of static in the background – you don’t see that any more do you!
The moment Julene Robinson as Floella bounded onto the stage to the Playschool theme tune, the lady next to me (a complete stranger I might add!) and I grabbed each other’s arms in a mixture of excitement and giddy nostalgia – you’d have thought we were watching Floella herself. From there on in we were swept along by a mixture of storytelling, dance and song – and, whilst the story does have a happy ending, there are some tough times to face too.
Floella’s life began as a happy little girl in Trinidad, enjoying the sunshine, the school and everything her Caribbean lifestyle had to offer her until, sold the dream of opportunities and a better life in “the mother country” her parents decided to make the move to England.
Initially Floella’s father moved to England first to get settled, calling for mum a year later who took the youngest two siblings with her and leaving the eldest four with cruel foster parents who did not care for them, made them work and even, in the case of her brothers, fight each other for food. It was a further 15 months before Floella’s parents had saved up enough money to be able to send tickets for the remaining for children to sail to travel to England to join them – meaning they wouldn’t have seen their dad in two years!
Aged just 10, Floella and her siblings sailed to England full of excitement to be reunited with their family and full of hope for their brand new futures in “the mother country” serving the Queen! Of course this excitement was short-lived when Floella realised that her family would be sharing just one room to eat and sleep in together, in a country where sometimes the sun didn’t shine for days and where she could not have been made to felt less welcome.
Floella and her family were subjected to racism and intolerance in 1960’s London from unkind words in the playground to being ignored in shops (with signs saying “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs” commonplace) or even having a hose pipe put through the letter box to flood the house.
Floella’s family worked hard – moving from that single room in a shared house, to two rooms, to their own house – they were determined to make their new life in England a success despite the difficulties they faced.
It would have been easy for Floella to fight back with anger and fists but with the support and guidance of her mother who was determined that Floella was destined for great things, Floella fought back with hard work, with kindness and with that huge smile that we all know and love.
This is a story of home, determination and triumph, of representation, of diversity and of equality (or lack thereof).
This stage adaptation of Floella Benjamin’s award-winning and iconic book Coming to England is suitable for children age 7+ (and for Floella’s Playschool Babies of which I am most definitely one!) There are important lessons to be learned from this story – lessons of tolerance, of hope, of hard work, of the importance of diversity and representation, and of facing hard things with a smile – do not write this off as a play for children, it is so much more than that.
Book tickets for Floella Benjamin’s Coming to England at The Lowry running from Thursday 6th to Sunday 9th February 2025.
Check out our guide to Manchester theatre next.
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