What Shadows (NHB Modern Plays)

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 how a bitterly divided country moves forward in the wake of a crisis. It premiered at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 2016, in a production directed by Roxana Silbert and starring Ian McDiarmid as Enoch Powell.

His plays include Elizabeth Gordon Quinn (Traverse 1985); The Evil Doers (Time Out Award 1990 and Charrington London Fringe Best New Play Award); Shining Souls which opened at the Traverse in 1996 and was revived by the Old Vic in 1997, winning a Scotland on Sunday Critics Award and a Lloyds Bank Playwright of the Year nomination. In 2006 Elizabeth Gordon Quinn was revived by the National Theatre of Scotland in its inaugural season. The God of Soho was staged by Shakespeare's Globe (2011) and The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain (Traverse, English Touring Theatre, Coventry Belgrade) was nominated in the 2011 CATS (Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland) in four categories, winning Best New Play and Best Ensemble. 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.