HOLDING FIRE! To 5 October.
London
HOLDING FIRE!
by Jack Shepherd.
Shakespeare’s Globe In rep to 5 October 2007.
23, 25, 30 Aug, 1, 10, 28 Sept, 1, 5 Oct 7.30pm Mat 21 Aug, 11, 29 Sept 2pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7401 9919/020 7087 7398.
www.shakespeares-globe.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 August.
Political turmoil on a large canvas.
Jack Shepherd’s new play concerns Chartism, the early-Victorian mass movement that asked for constitutional changes while providing the Establishment with their equivalent of a reds-under-the-bed scare. At the Globe its writing also reminds how Shakespeare’s dramatic style doesn’t create intimacy but demonstrates the poetry of intimacy, the public statement of private feelings.
Shakespeare’s characters are never alone, they’re alone with us. That’s why Howard Brenton’s In Extremis worked so well here; he too writes statements of feeling and ideas. It makes the Globe seem a likely home for, say, many of John Arden’s plays; where better to play Arden than in Shakespearean territory?
Most of the Chartists’ demands were later, bloodlessly, met. Shepherd has their opponents silkily agreeing with them in principle, merely working to subvert, scare and spy on them in practice. While the Globe allows a social panorama, Shepherd uses two ways to humanise the broad picture.
He focuses on Chartist leaders William Lovett and Feargus O’Connor. If Lovett holds fire on action, O’Connor is given a sight of army cannonry before addressing the crowd. As soldiers cover their ears, preparing to shoot into the mob, their officer restrains them, knowing the orator’s learned his lesson. Sure enough O’Connor’s fiery rhetoric fizzles out before igniting his listeners.
Secondly, Shepherd creates two servant-lovers on the run, though his attempts to mesh them with the political story never strike dramatic fire. Even less do attempts to drag in other political issues. Friedrich Engels remains an interpolation rather than becoming a character, while the inclusion of women’s rights remains elusively unconvincing.
It takes time to work out the play’s method; a lot’s introduced early on. But, once its elements fall into place, it charts them pointedly. There are strong performances in Mark Rosenblatt’s active production, which invades Groundling territory, especially for the boxing that accompanies aristocratic talk (a device used in Edward Bond’s The Fool).
And the final echoing of Lovett’s opening speech, first heard amid the hope and bustle of a tavern, then delivered in age, alone apart from a hanged corpse, forcefully encapsulates this intriguing, informative play’s whole progress.
William Lovett/Signor Cavellini: Peter Hamilton Dyer
Feargus O’Connor/Robert Bains/Weaver/Prison Guard: Jonathan Moore
Henry Vincent/Richard Dennison/Gunner/Robert Lowery/Prison Officer: Philip Cumbus
Count D’Orsay/Lord John Russell/Peter Bussey/John Phillips: Dale Rapley
Ira Frederick Aldridge/Tomkins/Bendigo: Christopher Obi
Oliver Wadham/Crossing Sweeper/Thomas Goode: Mark Rice Oxley
General Charles Napier/Chas Vellins/Barraclough/Zephaniah Williams: Philip Bird
Lizzie Bains: Louise Callaghan
Mrs Bains/Mrs Kettle/Dorothy: Pippa Nixon
Beth Bains/Molly: Alice Haig
Sam Bains/Officer/Convict/Jeremy: Leander Deeny
Old Jack/Arthur Harrington/referee/Blenkiron/Old Debtor: Jim Bywater
Friedrich Engels/Clerk/John Wostenhome: Nicholas Shaw
Coachman/Eli Morgan/Sergeant/John Deegan/Saunders/Lieutenant Gray/Prison Governor: Cornelius Booth
Mrs Harrington: Kirsty Besterman
Mrs Burgess/Mary Lovett/Welsh Woman/Old Lady: Jennifer Kidd
Jenkins/Burke/Samuel Thompson/Special Constable Hattersly/Priest: Adam Kay
Will: Craig Gazey
Director: Marl Rosenblatt
Designer: Janet Bird
Music: John Tams, Joe Townsend, the Band
Choreographer: Sian Williams
Movement: Glynn MacDonald
Voice coach: Jan Haydn Rowles
Fight director: Renny Krupinski
Assistant director: Kate Wasserberg
2007-08-09 09:08:57