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Title

Burning Passions

Writer

Michael Barry

Cast

full: 7m 4f, 1 boy + 3 other; w/doubling: 4m 2f, 1 boy

ISBN

9781840946987

Book Fee Code

D - £6

Licence Fee Code

D - £70 - for each performance.

Duration

Full Length

Type

A Musical Drama

Synopsis

Reduced cast (with doubling) 4m, 2f, 1 boy.

Just days after marrying simple Jane Shorney, popular young charcoal-burner John Walford clubbed her to death in despair. In love with another woman, intense frustration and a passionate nature saw him condemned to hang by a judge who wept openly at his tragedy. His body was left swinging from a gibbet in a cage for a year afterwards. This true 1789 Somerset story of a crime of passion lives on in folk memory today: it appalled Wordsworth and Coleridge, Walford’s Gibbet is still on the map, and audiences for the play’s first production were deeply affected by this re-enactment – which is also strong on music (one singer, one guitarist) and humour.

ORDERING THIS PLAY

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