18TH OCTOBER - 31ST DECEMBER 2017
Design by Mark Thompson.
This summer All Scene All Props built the Bridge Theatre's premiere production YOUNG MARX.
Rory Kinnear plays Marx and Oliver Chris, Engels. The production reunites the creative team behind Richard Bean's smash hit One Man, Two Guvnors, with direction by Nicholas Hytner, music by Grant Olding, sound by Paul Arditti and lighing by Mark Henderson.
"[Mark Thompson's design] is pure Dickens: all fog and pantaloons... A big black cube in the centre of the stage rotates and doors open to reveal living rooms or pawnbrookers. It's topped with miniature chimney stacks, smoking away, to create a darkly sihouetted skyline of Victorian London. Everything on stage looks thickly crusted in smog." - Tim Bano, Exeunt.
"Hynter's production and Thompson's design are faithful to the play's farcical structure, with hiding in cupoards and chasing over rooftops." - Michael Billington, Guardian.
"Hynter's production is zippy and fluid, eased along by Mark Thompson's design, which perches a grey cut-out skyscape of chimneys above the Marx's scruffy sitting room: like a top hat on a tramp.
[Cont.] "I don't think I've ever seen farcical devices - doors flung open on to secret conversations, bolts rhythmically clanged shut - employed to such telling psychological effect." - Susannah Clapp, Observer.
Synopsis:
1850, and Europe's most feared terrorist is hiding in Dean Street, Soho. Broke, restless and horny, the thiry-two-year-old revolutionary is a frothing combination of intellectual brilliance, invective, satiric wit, and child-like emotional illiteracy.
Creditors, spies, rival revoluntionary 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.
YOUNG MARX will run at the Bridge Theatre from Wednesday 18th October until Sunday 31st December 2017. For more information and to book tickets, click here.
YOUNG MARX will be broadcast by National Theatre Live on Thursday 7th December.
Reviews:
The Observer: **** 4 stars
'The evening feels alive both with truth and with reinvention.'
The Independent: **** 4 stars
'Rory Kinnear is on glorious form.'
Evening Standard: **** 4 stars
'High Marx for Bridge Theatre's opening show.'
The Times: **** 4 stars
'A seriously clever comedy. Riotous fun.'