Young Marx

by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 20 December 2017

Nicholas Hytner directs Rory Kinnear as Karl Marx, Nancy Carroll as Jenny von Westphalen, Oliver Chris as Friedrich Engels and Laura Elphinstone as Helene Dumuth in this inaugural production of the Bridge Theatre situated in one of the new developments on the south-west side of Tower Bridge.

The play concentrates on the early years of Marx's life in London when he and his wife Jenny and four children (in the play, only two) and Helene Dumuth were living in a two-room flat in Dean Street Soho. Though some events have been 're-arranged' so that they can appear within this setting and time frame, the scenes presented in the play are essentially 'true', though at the same time the playwrights have noticed the farcical elements of the situation and have consequently emphasised Marx's larrikin nature as a young man.

Welcome Home, Captain Fox!

by Anthony Weigh based on Jean Anouilh's Le Voyageur sans Bagage

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 26 March 2016

The play, directed by Blanche McIntyre, is an adaptation of Jean Anouilh's 1937 play concerning a returned soldier with amnesia. Anthony Weigh has reset it in the USA in the 1950s so that 'Gene' (Rory Keenan) has returned from the Second rather than the First World War. His blank state allows the people around him to reveal all sorts of secrets, prejudices and idiosyncrasies; in the end he manages to deploy some native cunning to escape from a less than ideal predicament.

Three Days in the Country

by Patrick Marber based on A Month in the Country by Ivan Turgenev

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 21 October 2015

Directed by Patrick Marber and designed by Mark Thompson, this version of Turgenev's play stars Amanda Drew as Natalya, John Light as Arkady, John Simm as Rakitin, Lily Sacofsky as Vera and Mark Gatiss as Shpigelsky.

The arrival of a young tutor at a Russian provincial country house triggers various crises amongst people who have been living together without formally acknowledging their feelings for a very long time. Arkady married Natalya on impulse - his friend Rakitin was with him when he first saw her, and wishes that he had acted first. Now he is a visitor to the estate, hardly able to bear being there but unable to keep away. Both Natalya and her ward Vera fall for the new tutor, and meanwhile there are subplots in which an unprepossessing neighbour wishes to marry Vera, while the doctor Shpigelsky makes an extraordinary proposal to a spinster in the household.