A rollicking tale of adventure set in early Victorian England, ranging from East End squalor to the Northern mills, and packing in an almost Dickensian gallery of characters.
England 1837: a country in a state of turmoil. A young girl is propelled on a journey from the London slums to the servants' quarters of a great house, and from first love to murder.
Jack Shepherd's play Holding Fire is a picaresque tale of tavern assemblies and prize fights, gin-palace communists and bullying do-gooders, industrialists and whores, bringing to life the violent times of early Victorian England.
Holding Fire was first staged at Shakespeare's Globe, London, in Jully 2007.
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'Passionate and fiercely relevant'
" - The Times
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'You want epic sweep, you got it. Jack Shepherd's rambling and rather wonderful history of the Victorian Chartist movement confirms the Globe as a venue for new writing of special, grand-scale quality'
" - Evening Standard
