Like a lot of bloggers I've been plugging the work of fringe ensemble The Faction
for some years now, but recently they haven't half been making it hard to maintain
that enthusiasm. There was last year's "
leave 'em wanting less" season, of course,
and now before
Vassa Zheleznova even starts there's a virtually unusable
programme costing £5: Inspired by the title character listening to the Shipping
Forecast, the programme is an A2 sheet folded like a map, making opening it and
finding any information a tricky business. The cost is because it includes the
playtext, although whether you'd be able to read it in the correct order is a
different story. And speaking of different stories, Emily Juniper has transposed
Gorky's play from revolutionary Russia to Liverpool during the 1990s dockers'
strike.
