The Faction Rep Season, New Diorama Theatre

Breathing life into the now rarely seen rep model, The Faction Theatre Company are back for another season of classics, offering muscular new interpretations of three canonical plays.

The once popular rep model – whereby an ensemble of actors perform a season of plays in repertory – has almost entirely fallen by the wayside in Britain, but for the third year running The Faction are reviving it at the New Diorama Theatre. Over seven weeks in January and February, they will be performing their versions of Hamlet , Thebes and The Robbers , even offering theatregoers with high stamina levels the chance to see all three in one day. 

The Faction’s new production of Hamlet follows a long and successful track record with Shakespeare and represents a welcome return to the Bard’s plays after he was left out of the company’s 2013 rep season. Thebes, meanwhile, marks the world premiere of a new version of this classic saga, ambitiously weaving together Sophocles and Aeschylus to tell the full, bloody story, from ill-fated Oedipus to his equally doomed daughter Antigone.

The season ends with a revival of the company’s 2011 Peter Brook/Equity Ensemble Award-winning production of Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers. This was the play that launched Schiller’s career, and its questions about violence, class and masculinity remain as urgent today as when they were first written. This production also forms part of The Faction’s ambitious ongoing project to eventually translate, adapt and stage the complete works of Schiller.

Based on The Faction’s past performances, we expect fresh, vibrant, stripped down versions of these classic plays, with the use of physical theatre and visual invention offering an opportunity to see familiar work anew. We can’t wait to see them get their hands on this latest set of plays. 

Tickets: £16, £13, £11