HOLDING FIRE!
HOLDING FIRE!
3rd August – 3rd September
BY JACK SHEPHERD
Director Mark Rosenblatt Designer Janet Bird Composer John Tams and Joe Townsend
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
Running Time: 2 hours 45 minutes including an interval
This play focuses on the radical 19th century Chartist Movement, it's struggle for one man, one vote. (ie not woman, that came much later in 1918.) Much of this play is very expressive, populist but most of the dialogue and characterisation fails to rise above the level of cliché, which may please some, presumably people who enjoy plays filled with cliches. Of course the setting is marvellous, of course the acting and even the script was competent. But don’t expect anything more than populist entertainment. The ideals depicted are laudable (who wants to write a play concerned with the enjoyment of debasement or celebrate immorality?), the delineation of good and evil obvious, predictable, the situations stock, melodramatic. The prose was well written, the costumes not drab, the stage was swept clean, the lemonade even tasted quite fizzy. But wasn’t there something missing?
Paul Murphy, The Globe, London
3rd August – 3rd September
BY JACK SHEPHERD
Director Mark Rosenblatt Designer Janet Bird Composer John Tams and Joe Townsend
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
Running Time: 2 hours 45 minutes including an interval
This play focuses on the radical 19th century Chartist Movement, it's struggle for one man, one vote. (ie not woman, that came much later in 1918.) Much of this play is very expressive, populist but most of the dialogue and characterisation fails to rise above the level of cliché, which may please some, presumably people who enjoy plays filled with cliches. Of course the setting is marvellous, of course the acting and even the script was competent. But don’t expect anything more than populist entertainment. The ideals depicted are laudable (who wants to write a play concerned with the enjoyment of debasement or celebrate immorality?), the delineation of good and evil obvious, predictable, the situations stock, melodramatic. The prose was well written, the costumes not drab, the stage was swept clean, the lemonade even tasted quite fizzy. But wasn’t there something missing?
Paul Murphy, The Globe, London
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