$20 General Admission, $17 Member, $12 child age 14 or younger
Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening Buy tickets at Film Center or online now
Rory Kinnear (The Threepenny Opera, Penny Dreadful, Othello) is Marx and Oliver Chris (Twelfth Night, Green Wing) is Engels, in this new comedy written by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman.
Broadcast live from The Bridge Theatre, London, the production is directed by Nicholas Hytner and reunites the creative team behind Broadway and West End hit comedy One Man, Two Guvnors.
1850, and Europe’s most feared terrorist is hiding in Dean Street, Soho. Broke, restless and horny, the thirty-two-year-old revolutionary is a frothing combination of intellectual brilliance, invective, satiric wit, and child-like emotional illiteracy.
Creditors, spies, rival revolutionary factions and prospective seducers of his beautiful wife all circle like vultures. His writing blocked, his marriage dying, his friend Engels in despair at his wasted genius, his only hope is a job on the railway.
But there’s still no one in the capital who can show you a better night on the piss than Karl Heinrich Marx.
“Richard Bean and Clive Coleman give us almost that in their knock-about comedy scaffolded out of a little celebrated episode in the life of Karl Marx, his impecunious residence in Soho in 1850, while genning up on the reading material available at the British Museum and dodging his many creditors. The tone is light, the laughs – expertly placed and flawlessly executed by a quality cast of 17 – come thick and fast, and the mood of gaiety and effervescent wit fairly shouts joyous tidings of the new theatrical birth. It is an act of some daring, and of an intellectual canniness worthy of a Tom Stoppard, to make such a bright, light comedy out of the ‘early years’ of one of philosophical economics’ stodgiest prophets. Yet, Bean and Coleman don’t put a foot wrong. Briskly plotted, dizzily paced with doors flying shut and open with split-second timing, revealing and concealing the players with all the aplomb of a delicious Deuxieme Empire farce, the play is a racy, gallivanting romp, making the earnest lead a figure of fun.”–Julian Eaves, BritishTheatre.com
“[W]hat makes the piece especially timely is its adroit portrait of an open London where refugees were welcomed and where a wanted man like Marx, in flight from the wave of 1848 revolutions in Europe and mistakenly branded a terrorist, could escape arrest or extradition. An appetite-whetting start for a bold, risky venture that has its priorities right and deserves success. Did I mention that the Bridge has a vast, welcoming foyer and will mount the occasional musical? Or that Young Marx will be broadcast by National Theatre live on 7 December?”–Pat Taylor, Independent
