Theatre review: Reptember - The Man With the Flower in His Mouth / Medea / Metamorphosis

I've been plugging ambitious rep company The Faction for a few years now, but by the end of this year's season I was starting to wonder if their choices of text and style of production were in danger of becoming a bit predictable. Almost as if they heard me, for the first time they've announced a September repertory season at the New Diorama in addition to their usual January/February one, with a new direction both in style and presentation - and if the latter involves Tom Radford rolling sweatily around the floor with his top off that's just a bonus. Reptember is a trio of triple-bills, each of the 9 plays being adaptations - some looser than others - of classic works. But unlike most of the source material, these new versions are monologues, performed by regular members of the ensemble and a couple of guest actors.

Theatre review: The Robbers

The Faction conclude their 2014 rep season with their pet playwright, Friedrich Schiller, and a tale of warring siblings. Handsome, charismatic Karl (Tom Radford) has got in with the wrong crowd but begs his father for forgiveness. Crippled, twisted younger brother Franz (Andrew Chevalier) wants the family wealth and titles for himself, so convinces their father to disinherit his brother instead. Believing himself damned by a father's curse, Karl agrees to lead his friends as they go from libertines to all-out gang of vicious robbers who lay waste to whole cities at a time and laugh in the face of the church. But when Karl learns of Franz's advances towards his beloved Amalia (Kate Sawyer,) he returns home for a showdown. Mark Leipacher directs his and Daniel Millar's translation of Schiller's The Robbers.

Theatre review: Thebes

I don't think I've seen The Faction tackle Greek Tragedy before - surprising really, as the importance of the Chorus would seemingly make it a good match for a company built around an ensemble. If they've neglected the genre before they make up for it by doing three in one: Gareth Jandrell has taken the various plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles dealing with noted motherfucker Oedipus and his legacy, and knitted them into a single epic history of Thebes. We begin with the city's king Oedipus (Lachlan McCall) at the height of his hubris, angrily demanding that the killer of his predecessor be found, and dismissing all the signs pointing to the fact that he himself is the killer. When it becomes obvious that he fulfilled the prophecy to kill his father and marry (or fuck, in this no-nonsense translation) his mother (Kate Sawyer,) he blinds himself and sets out to die - but in the process leaves a dangerous power vacuum in his city.