The Faction’s 2013 repertory season continues with Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, a typically dark and despairing play which focuses on the lives, loves and thwarted desires of Olga, Masha and Irina. Chekhov’s familiar themes of unfulfilled hope, desolation and futility are played out in a mythological Russian rural town in the late 1800s, one year after the death of the sisters’ father. One by one, the protagonists unveil vacant, purposeless lives laced with hopeless longing. Irina hates her living situation with a vengeance and longs to return to the bright lights of Moscow; Masha is deeply unhappy in her marriage to a boring school teacher and Olga, although successful in her career, would far rather be settled with a family.

Any company’s decision to tackle Chekhov is a brave one and, on the whole, this production does not disappoint. It is difficult, however, not to compare it with director Mark Leipacher’s bold opening to the season and the piece lacks the edginess and artistic inventiveness of Fiesco. It could be, of course, that Chekhov simply offers less to work with and there are undoubtedly still moments of brilliance. For example, although use of the Faction’s trademark ensemble is more limited in this production, one particular scene in which the large cast sit in a perfectly straight line at a party, becoming awkwardly transfixed with something as unexciting as a spinning top, works brilliantly to highlight the empty lives.

Ranjit Bolt’s modern adaption of the text also works well and, once again, there are some superb performances. Derval Mellett’s Marsha is skillfully portrayed as bored to the point of desperation, whilst Jonny McPherson delivers a sensitive portrayal of Vershinin, her married lover who serves to relieve some of her frustration. Lachlan McCall is consistently believable as Andrei, the sisters’ weak, hapless brother, his wife Natasha (played memorably by Laura Freeman), the archetypal, pushy outsider who worms herself successfully into the family despite being hugely unpopular.

The Faction’s 2013 repertory season has much to live up to, but this first offering, a challenging and adventurous take on Schiller’s obscure Fiesco, not only the UK premiere but the English language premiere, bodes very well. It follows in the footsteps of the company’s award-winning production of The Robbers and award-nominated Mary Stuart, continuing their ambitious plan to stage Schiller’s complete works.

Fiesco is a republican tragedy based on the historical conspiracy of Giovanni Luigi Fieschi against Andrea Doria in Genoa in 1547, tracking the rise and fall of its protagonist as he finds himself at the heart of an attempt to overthrow a tyrant. A soave, wealthy young Count with a decadent lifestyle to match, Fiesco is suddenly surrounded by ardent conspirators who seem to want to herald him. However, each man has his own selfish goal, and Fiesco himself periodically grapples with his conscience as he tries to ascertain his own desires and motives. The action is fast-paced and complex and Schiller provides endless twists and turns, building layer upon layer of conspiracy and corruption.

This production, despite the Faction’s characteristic lack of scenery and props, is bold and colourful, director Mark Leipacher daring and inventive throughout. The disguise of the omnipresent, physically conspicuous Chorus during the first half with use of a variety of rubber masks and the doubling up of actor Gareth Fordred to depict both the aging Duke and his depraved, tyrannical nephew are enlightened, bold devices which work well.

Performances are excellent across the board, but particularly worthy of mention are Richard Delaney, whose Fiesco is consistently believable and engaging, Kate Sawyer who delivers an extravagant and crowd-pleasing portrayal of Julia, the unfortunate object of Fiesco’s feigned love-interest, and Anna-Maria Nabirye, who is beautifully emotionless and mercenary as the tragic hero’s side-kick and spy.

George Bernard Shaw makes a seldom-seen and very welcome visit to the London Fringe this January with Wilmington Theatre Company’s vibrant production of Overruled, a trio of his lesser-known short comedies. Fast-paced, insightful and littered with guffaw-inducing one-liners, the plays give a delightful insight into the playwright’s wittier, more daring side.

How He Lied to Her Husband, concerning a book of passionate love poetry that falls into the wrong hands with surprising consequences, Overruled, examining the extra-marital relations between two different couples whilst on holiday and Village Wooing, tracing an unlikely relationship starting on a cruise ship and blossoming in a village store, fit very well together, the controversial (if not unspeakable, in Shaw’s day) issues they explore making for a modern and relevant slant. The battle of the sexes, role reversals, adultery, skewed morals and wife-swapping are just some of the themes thrown into focus as the company work competently through each extended sketch.

Polina Kalinina’s direction is intelligent and slick, ensuring perfect pace and mood throughout whilst Emma Bailey’s simple yet sophisticated set design provides the necessary adaptability for the transitions between plays. The whole company provide consistently excellent acting, but particularly worthy of mention are Leo Wyndham, who makes swapping from nervous, naive idealism to arrogant swagger look easy and Lucy Hough who really shines in the final piece as the canny, self-assured young shop assistant who becomes master of her own destiny and exposes the fragility and shortcomings of her male counterpart.

This festive season, one of Southwark’s truly delightful hidden gems plays host to Once Upon a Mattress, a 1950s musical adaption of classic fairy tale The Princess and the Pea that claims to reveal a more accurate, untold version of events.

At first, this production appears to lack purpose, losing sight of what it wants to be; is it a bawdy take on an old classic aimed at adults or a wholesome piece of children’s entertainment? Admittedly, Mary Rodgers’s score and Marshall Barer’s lyrics are dated and do not really provide material of a consistently high quality for the cast and creative team to work with, but if this is intended to be a tongue-in-cheek version of a timeless classic then numerous tricks and opportunities to raise laughs are completely missed by various cast members.

Purpose rapidly loses importance, though, as the performance gets into full swing, the fantastic array of talent on stage unfolds and we are treated to some superb acting and polished singing and dancing. The chorus ensemble is particularly strong, drawing all it possibly can from the score with some soaring harmonies and pristine piano accompaniment from musical director, Alex Parker. Kirk Jameson’s direction comes into its inventive own with his decision to intermittently have the ensemble both observe and contribute to the action taking place on stage from the back of the auditorium, whether this be singing or tap dancing.

This is a predominantly youthful cast, with several people certain of bright futures. Ryan Limb’s Minstrel opens the show beautifully and draws the audience in immediately, Stiofan O’Doherty is dashing and believable as Sir Harry, his beautiful singing voice verging on the operatic as he woos his way through a tricky situation, Jenny O’Leary, lovable and compelling, provides the perfect non-traditional heroine in Princess Winifred and her Prince Dauntless, played faultlessly by Mark Anderson is the archetypal, hapless Mummy’s boy. As for the more senior members of the ensemble, Paddy Glynn’s Queen Aggravain is suitably malevolent as she enlists distinguished David Pendlebury’s wizard to devise tests designed to stump her son’s sequence of potential wives. Denis Quilligan, as the mute King Sextimus, displays the most skilful comic timing of the piece throughout several scenes.

An enjoyable evening that provides a pleasant and quirky alternative to the traditional family pantomime in an intimate setting.

This production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless and iconic novel, The Great Gatsby, by Ruby in the Dust theatre company is, amazingly, the third to grace the London stage this year, but the first musical adaption (although in truth, this is more a ‘play with music’).

Joe Evans’s smoky, jazzy score, Belle Mundi’s superb costume designs and a summer’s evening in London to rival some of Long Island’s finest combine to present an excellent depiction of America’s ‘Roaring Twenties’. Strong performances, and clever direction by Linnie Reedman, help to convey the hope and glamour of the era, shrouding the insecurities, secrets and sadness below the glitzy surfaces of these characters.

As the performance progresses, though, the difficulty of condensing a novel so celebrated and so complicated into a two hour ‘musical’ becomes increasingly apparent. Whilst there are some truly unforgettable tunes, at times the vocals come in under par, with a lack of singing confidence, and some of the ensemble numbers seem like they need a little more polish.

Matilda Sturridge’s Daisy is sultry and beautiful, making an ideal partner for Sean Browne’s handsome and mysterious Gatsby, yet she is a little young for the role and fails to convey the depth and the world-weariness her character should embody. The sexual chemistry between Steven Clarke’s buff and obnoxious Tom and Naomi Bullock’s feisty Myrtle is altogether more believable. It is always a joy to see actors double up as musicians and, hot and gutsy, Bullock does a marvelous job on clarinet and delivers the show’s catchiest number beautifully. Raphael Verrion’s Nick Carraway is also worthy of a mention, king of the ménage-à-trios and convincing sufferer of awkward moments throughout.

An undoubtedly enjoyable evening, just a little too light in places, with too much of the original’s subtlety and nuance lost in translation.

It is Monowitz, one of Auschwitz’s three main camps during the Second World War, that provides the stark and uncomfortable setting for the The Beekeeper. The play is inspired by a combination of writer Michael Ashton’s own stint in prison, an experience alien to many of us, and his fascination with the common bee, a creature familiar to all of us. The two themes merge to provide an intriguing blend and create the parallel that lies at the heart of the play’s startling originality.

Whilst the horrific events of the mid-20th century’s Holocaust are incredibly well-documented, I am sure I am not alone in being saddened and disgusted whenever I am served a reminder of the sheer humiliation and cruelty one set of human beings became capable of bestowing on another. This is, of course, what The Beekeeper is all about and the play does not fail to hit hard; it’s an intense and thought-provoking 90 minutes.

However, the slant is somewhat different to what we are accustomed to seeing and reading. In the writer’s own words there are no “bodies being fed into furnaces and whips cracking”. Instead, the spotlight is firmly on a single corner of the camp where the prisoner Stressler resides in isolation. Believed to be a conspirator by the other prisoners, he tenderly nurtures a hive of bees which serves not only as a distraction from his miserable, pain-filled existence but as a supply of honey for Nazi officers, in particular one Richard Baer.

Whilst honey and royal jelly provide the first tenuous point of communication between Baer and Stressler, over time a strangely complicated and somewhat sinister relationship forms. It is this unusual version of interaction between perpetrator and victim that interests Ashton and that is brought sharply into focus. As the atrocities of the camp continue outside the four walls of Victoria Spearing’s fittingly claustrophobic set, Stressler and Baer engage in what can only be described as a battle of wills whereby power and fear shift unpredictably back and forth.

Robert Harding’s Baer is a suitably commanding and charismatic presence, towering over his victim and barking his lines in a clipped version of received pronunciation which contrasts sharply with the Jewish man’s brilliantly authentic accent. Whilst the interaction between the two is usually nothing short of gripping, at times there is the feeling that director and producer Adrian McDougall could do more to heighten the inevitable feelings of tension and foreboding on stage. Eliot Giuralarocca puts in a sympathetic, compelling and deeply human performance as Stressler, whose unwavering resoluteness and resilience mirror that of the bees he loves. Chris Westgate as Stressler’s unfortunate, ration-bringing friend, Kolbe, and Spencer Cummins as the archetypal Jew-hating German officer, Sergeant Beck, provide engaging support throughout.

This is important and provocative drama which will continue to tug at the memory and undoubtedly have a long life beyond the London fringe.

Apparently a hit for the Bush theatre back in 2000, A Place at the Table is BAFTA-nominated Simon Block’s biting satire on the TV industry. This revival is presented by Signal Theatre Company under the direction of Robert Wolstenholme.

The themes Block obviously wishes to highlight are immediately apparent. All of the action takes place in the soulless meeting room of a TV production house. Young, disabled playwright, Adam, has written a ‘lethally good’ script and impressed readers with writing that is ‘vehement and compassionate’. However, from the first minute it is his wheelchair rather than his artistic prowess that is the focus as not one person he interacts with manages to see past his disability.

Whilst Sarah, the nicotine-dependent (what a cliché!) script editor Adam has come to meet, possibly appreciates his talent, her motivation is to make a name for herself in a shallow and revenue-driven arena. The battle between artistic and commercial motivation is played out between the two as Sarah struggles to persuade Adam to redirect his efforts into writing a sitcom about a disabled man. Insulted at first, Adam leaves in a rage. Three months later he succumbs to towing the line but returns only to find he is too late; the fickle Sarah, personifying her industry, has moved on to something else and Adam’s potential project has lost its appeal.

It is clear that these characters are supposed to be odious, but surely not to the point that one ceases to care very quickly what happens to them? The reams of boring dialogue about the whys and wherefores of the way the ‘industry’ operates and the differences between a ‘place’ and a ‘seat’ in a script littered with numerous, tedious industry in-jokes, unnecessary swear words and downright jargon, are in danger of overshadowing some good, solid performances; any empathy one might start to feel with the characters’ plights is quickly lost.

Kellie Batchelor puts in a solid performance as queen of bullshit Sarah with her delusions of grandeur and inflated idea of her own influence and importance. Christopher Tester’s Adam is frankly quite dull, however comes into his own when faced with rejection, putting on a believable show of genuine hurt. Eva Tausig is truly entertaining as out-of-place, art history Oxford University recruit Rachel, the ‘trustafarian’ (another cliché) trainee who appears to lack any kind of social intelligence.

This play would possibly be of interest to those who have particular experience of the seemingly unpleasant way the ‘industry’ operates behind the scenes and the monotonous characters that inhabit it. But ultimately it is niche writing for a niche audience and fails to go anywhere much after its main messages are transmitted in the first 15 minutes.

It is a scenario that surely most of us have encountered at least once; the morning after the night before, a drunken indiscretion that seemed a good idea at the time and was undeniably fun but that in the cold light of day brings only exhaustion, displacement and regret.

Written in 1888, Miss Julie brings such a situation sharply into focus. Arguably the most accessible of August Strindberg’s plays, it is a creature of the naturalist movement, the school of theatre that attempted to create illusions of reality through a range of different dramatic mechanisms.

Strindberg himself was eager to push at the boundaries of this and achieve what he called a ‘greater naturalism’. He maintained true naturalism should involve a psychological ‘battle of brains’ where character replaces plot and the possibilities for exploiting human folly and weakness therefore become endless.

Miss Julie  concentrates on the complexity of the feelings of Julie and Jean, two people from very different worlds, as they interact in the claustrophobic, dizzy here and now. Ensuing over the course of one very hot Midsummer’s night, the play takes the themes of class, love, lust and the battle of the sexes, and rams them together, experimenting with how the four elements can interact and, ultimately, wreak destruction on their exponents.

Formed two years ago, The Faction Theatre company is young, vibrant and known for its ability to breathe fresh new life into old works; this production is no exception, however the company stays simultaneously true to Strindberg’s naturalist vision and intricate stage direction.

Under the superb direction of Mark Leipacher and Rachel Valentine Smith the senses are immediately stirred as members of the company create a surreptitious huddle of whispering voyeurs, placed off-stage yet visible to the audience. The effect is staggering, both visually and audibly. The set is sparse, the absence of props paving the way for superb sound effects, also provided by members of the ensemble. Every shuffle, clink and crack is powerfully immediate, heightening the feeling of immediacy and tension.

The three-strong cast does not disappoint. More clever direction ensures a distinct lack of hierarchy between the two protagonists, despite their gaping social differences, and they joust almost as equals. Leonie Hill is marvellous as the overtly sexual and flirtatious young seductress and at times we can almost forgive Cary Crankson’s smooth-talking Jean for his cold, confusing behaviour and attempts to humiliate and disarm her as she descends into her frenzy of vulnerable regret and exposes herself as little more than a lost child. Kate Sawyer provides excellent support as the stoic, long-suffering Kristin.