Holding Fire!

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by Jack Shepherd

  • Director: Mark Rosenblatt
  • Designer: Janet Bird
  • Composer: John Tams and Joe Townsend

England 1837: a country on the cusp of revolution. A young girl is propelled on a journey from a London slum to the servants’ quarters of a great house, and from first love to murder. In her flight from authority she comes across the Chartist William Lovett, a man striving to steer a middle course between the brutal coalition of Parliament and Industry and the angry forces gathering against it. But can his rational, moderate voice be heard above the din of government militias on one side and the roaring militancy of Feargus O’Conor on the other?

Ranging from East End squalor to Nottingham mills, Jack Shepherd tells a picaresque tale of tavern assemblies and prize fights, gin palace communists and bullying do-gooders, industrialists and whores, bringing to the Globe for the first time the sordid, violent times of early Victorian England.

Jack Shepherd has worked at the Globe many times before – both as actor and director – and makes a welcome return as writer with his latest play, Holding Fire! Shepherd is author of Chasing the Moment , In Lambeth and Through A Cloud. His play will be directed by talented young director, Mark Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt is Artistic Director of Dumbfounded Theatre. His credits include Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi (Arcola Theatre) and The Circle (Oxford Stage Company)

Cast
Kirsty Besterman
Philip Bird
Cornelius Booth
Jim Bywater
Louise Callaghan
Philip Cumbus
Leander Deeny
Craig Gazey
Alice Haig
Peter Hamilton Dyer
Adam Kay
Jennifer Kidd
Pippa Nixon
Jonathan Moore
Christopher Obi
Dale Rapley
Mark Rice-Oxley
Nicholas Shaw

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