Back at the theatre last night, this time to see The Faction’s adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley. It’s an entertaining enough production, though much of it didn’t work for me.

In a talented ensemble cast, Christopher Hughes is engaging as Ripley, but lacked any real sense of menace, and more than a talented sociopath, he seemed to bumble from one incident to another without any real plan of action. Christopher York was convincingly unlikeable as the entitled Dickie, though Sophie Spreadbury felt short-changed by Marge, who was thinly written and too often felt more like a plot point than a character.

Holly Pigott’s design was striking and versatile, while director Mark Leipacher uses the actors’ bodies and physicality very well, though I felt like the show wasn’t quite sure how far it wanted to commit to the queer subtext of the source material.

Overall, if you are a fan of the books or film this is worth seeing, but for my mind, it doesn’t quite live up to either.