'I was a storm. I was also a man entirely alone in a storm. There were forces beyond my control and I was one of them.'

1968. Midlands MP Enoch Powell has something to say. Something he feels needs to be said. Something that could divide Britain forever.

1992. Rose Cruickshank, a black Oxford academic, wants answers. Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech, with its controversial words about immigration, shattered her childhood and now she is driven to confront both the man who made the speech and her own troubled identity. Will a meeting with Enoch resolve the conflicts that are tearing her - and the country - apart?

Chris Hannan's powerful play, What Shadows, is a searing look at identity and immigration within a bitterly divided country. It premiered at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 2016, in a production directed by Roxana Silbert and starring Ian McDiarmid as Enoch Powell. The play was revived at the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh in 2017, before transferring to Park Theatre, London.

About the Author

Chris Hannan is playwright and novelist.

His plays include Elizabeth Gordon Quinn (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1985; revived by the National Theatre of Scotland in its inaugural season in 2006); The Evil Doers (Bush Theatre, London, 1990; Time Out Award and Charrington London Fringe Best New Play Award); Shining Souls (Traverse, 1996, revived by the Old Vic in 1997; winner of a Scotland on Sunday Critics Award and a Lloyds Bank Playwright of the Year nomination); The God of Soho (Shakespeare's Globe, 2011); The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain (Traverse, English Touring Theatre, Coventry Belgrade, 2011) and What Shadows (Birmingham Rep, 2016).

As well as original plays, Hannan has adapted Crime and Punishment (Glasgow Citizens' Theatre/Liverpool Playhouse/Lyceum Edinburgh, 2013) and The Iliad (Lyceum Edinburgh, 2016); and also made new versions of Ibsen's The Pretenders (RSC, 1991), Gogol's Gamblers (Tricycle 1992), and Stars in the Morning Sky (Coventry Belgrade, 2012).

His 2008 novel Missy was awarded the McKitterick Prize for a debut novel.

Reviews

'Chilling... the most provocative theatrical act of the decade'

* Telegraph *

'An emotive play, dealing with a subject that resonates in the current climate... it would be easy to sensationalise, but Hannan's writing ensures it steers clear of that path, making it, if anything, more chilling... like Powell in his heydey, it is hypnotising. It is simultaneously thoughtful, thought-provoking and difficult to watch'

* The Reviews Hub *

'A visceral play... Powell seems from another age except that some of his concerns, Islamic fundamentalism and the disenfranchised working class, are the stuff of Brexit Britain'

* The Times *

'A timely, intelligent, and often poetic play about immigration, identity and the power of words to inflame'

* The Stage *



Book Information
ISBN 9781848426276
Author Chris Hannan
Format Paperback
Page Count 104
Imprint Nick Hern Books
Publisher Nick Hern Books