I was brought up with such a visceral hatred of Enoch Powell that I still find it difficult to think about him. Which is why Chris Hannan’s play, examining the context and content of his 1968 “rivers of blood” anti-immigration speech, could have been written for me. He has not, after all, gone away.
Powell himself called it his Birmingham speech: the precise phrase “rivers of blood” does not appear in it. He delivered it down the road from Birmingham Rep; it has more than geographical urgency. Birmingham was split 50/50 on the Brexit vote.
What Shadows is overstuffed with notions and characters. Still, better that than understuffed. Powell’s idea of England – “not so much a place as a grief” – is vividly evoked in Roxana Silbert’s production: in the sound of vanishing lapwings, in lines of AE Housman, and in Ti Green’s dapple-shaded woodland set. All this wistfulness – alongside all that harshness. This is the springboard for questions about what gives anyone a sense of identity. Is it really to do with place? What happens when we begin to lose our minds? A fascinating hinterland is opened, but the central question slips out of focus.
A crowd of different witnesses circle around Powell. A white woman – mentioned in the speech – who said she was yelled at and spat at by black children in her street. Two Pakistani men trying to establish careers and families in England. A white Quaker friend of Powell’s who breaks with him after the speech. And, most crucially, the daughter of a Barbadian woman whose mother ignored her because her skin was insufficiently light, who confronts the former politician. All these characters raise interesting points; none are given more than a few brushstrokes.
Powell, though, is fully embodied. I don’t think any actor could become him more convincingly than Ian McDiarmid. He gets the obvious notes: the thudding emphasis, the nasal delivery. Adopting the stoop of a taller man, he looks almost uncannily similar. More important, he suggests real complexity: adamantine crispness, political ambition and a touch of terror.
Two marvellous unexpected speeches ring completely true. It is said that Powell hated getting his head wet; that he hated having his hair washed (why wasn’t he, as an adult, washing it himself?). Later, he describes himself as having been both a storm and a man in that storm. McDiarmid’s particularly complicated, crackling, layer-shifting voice is essential here: it does not plead for sympathy; it never merely orates. I only think his Parkinsonian gait is not quite right: it needs more shuffle.
