Holding Fire

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 this twin oppression. But can Lovett's rational, moderate voice be heard above the din of government militias on one side and the roaring militancy of Feargus O'Connor on the other. Ranging across early Victorian England from East End squalor to Nottingham mills, Holding Fire! tells a picaresque, almost Dickens-like tale of tavern assassinations and prize fights, gin palace 'communists' and bullying do-gooders, industrialists and whores. Commissioned by Shakespeare's Globe as part of their new initiative to stage new work alongside the classics, Holding Fire! is premiered there in July and will play right through to October.