Family Matters
The Theban Plays
Fringe Studio Theatre
Last show tonight
For their 21st anniversary production at the Fringe Club, Performance Exchange turns to the classics for inspiration.
Adapted from Sophocles' dramas, The Theban Plays is one of two productions Daniel Foley and Risako Ataka created for the 2005 Hong Kong City Fringe Arts Festival. First performed during the classical Greek period 2,500 years ago, Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone are the epitome of western drama.
The tag team of Foley and Ataka take on multiple roles, distilling the essence of the three tragedies into 45 minutes of intense drama.
Within the intimacy of the 50-seat Fringe Studio, the actors take on a larger-than-life quality.
Foley is an engaging actor with charismatic presence and despite inhabiting four different roles in less than an hour, he makes each of them distinct and memorable.
Ataka adopts exaggerated accents for her four roles, making it difficult to understand her at times, and does not occupy her characters fully enough.
However, she redeems herself in the last act with her passionate portrayal of Antigone facing King Creon as a Muslim woman reasoning with an American general - an obvious comment on events in Iraq.
If this whets the appetite, the talented London and Tokyo-based theatre company plays its last show tonight. Tickets are $99 and $80.