UK Edition
Review
Enoch Powell play What Shadows is the most provocative theatrical act of the decade - review
Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968 was arguably the most controversial political address of the post-war period in Britain. It earned Powell instant demotion from the Conservative shadow cabinet under Ted Heath and a notoriety that followed him to the grave in 1998.
Now, almost 50 years on, a short stroll from the hotel in Birmingham’s New Street where it was given, the speech is being rendered on stage (lightly edited, almost in its entirety) by one of the country’s finest actors, Ian McDiarmid, got up to look the eerie spit of Powell.
How chilling to hear those sentiments of foreboding as if new-minted. A suited McDiarmid, speech-paper in hand, a rasp and metallic rattle in his crisp voice – allowing in the occasional choking emphasis of anger or half-laugh of incredulity as his concerns about immigration are vented – stands his ground. Around him, a handful of ethnic-minority characters look on and walk off in silent rebuke: the most minimal (if eloquent) protest. Essentially, it’s this man, those words, and us – listening, taking it all in, hearing him out.
Does this re-enactment, which sits at the heart of Coventry-based Chris Hannan’s new play about the episode and its legacy, What Shadows, rank as the most provocative theatrical act of the decade? I’d say so. If theatre was duty-bound to avoid giving potential offence, then the Birmingham Rep would rightly be in trouble for premiering this. But one of the art form’s roles is to ask difficult questions and, by trusting its audience, the Rep (run by Roxana Silbert, who directs here) is to be applauded for opening the floodgates to serious debate, even if it will no doubt be vilified in some quarters.
Hannan has diligently tried to relay the context of the speech, and its personal fall-out (it immediately hit the real, close friendship between Powell and his wife Pam, and local newspaper editor Clem Jones and his wife Marjorie) alongside a fictionalised evocation of the country at two distinct points in time.
Beginning on a Scottish shore in 1992 (birch trees and a pool of water are the prime design features) it introduces us to a former Oxford academic called Sofia ousted for suggesting that Powell’s speech “has never been answered” and Rose, a black academic who helped hound her out. The latter, who experienced racism in her own family (disowned by her mother for having darker skin), proposes a joint book to fly the flag for reconciliation. Shuttling between periods, the story moves towards a showdown encounter with the ageing Powell, and we glean that a “racialist” Sixties war-widow called Grace is the constituent he referred to as the last white woman in her street, and that Rose was one of the neighbouring black children said to have taunted her.
That’s a lot to fit in – and it falls to only a handful of ancillary characters to denote an emerging multi-cultural England. Hannan’s script inclines towards the sketchy in the supporting roles, and as a consequence Powell has more air-time, many of the better lines (reflective of his droll erudition) and he appears better rounded than the others (there’s even the pathos of his eventual battle with Parkinson’s, McDiarmid spasming uncontrollably, losing sovereignty over his body).
Yes, these are flaws but they’re not reason to shun the piece. If its main character is over-dominant, that doesn’t squeeze out broad, and useful, questions about what national identity means to all concerned, asking in sum if there’s a positive way forward. Given the current, high levels of concern about immigration and how long a shadow that speech has cast, a depressingly necessary evening.
Until Nov 12. Tickets: 0121 236 4455; birmingham-rep.co.uk