Young Marx
Overview of the production
This production ran from 18 October – 31 December 2017
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.
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, design by Mark Thompson, music by Grant Olding, sound by Paul Arditti and lighting by Mark Henderson.
Young Marx was broadcast by National Theatre Live on 7 December. For details on Encore screenings of this production please visit ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk
“A SERIOUSLY CLEVER COMEDY. RIOTOUS FUN.”
The Times ★★★★
“HIGH MARX FOR BRIDGE THEATRE’S OPENING SHOW.”
Evening Standard ★★★★
“RORY KINNEAR IS ON GLORIOUS FORM.”
The Independent ★★★★
“THE EVENING FEELS ALIVE BOTH WITH TRUTH AND WITH REINVENTION.”
The Observer ★★★★
General Information
Ticket Prices
£65, £50, £35, £25, £15
Reduced prices for previews & midweek matinees
Premium tickets available
Download TodayTix to get exclusive £20 rush tickets
Performance Schedule
Tuesday to Saturday 7.45pm, Wednesday & Saturday 2.30pm & Sunday 3pm
Length
Approximately 2 hours 20 minutes (including an interval)
Additional Information
Contains strong language, sexual references and violence
From the programme
The Second Time as Farce
Francis Wheen
It is one of Karl Marx’s most quoted lines: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” As something of a world-historic…
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The Mill-Owning Marxist
Tristram Hunt
“Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented.” The secret to the friendship between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – perhaps the greatest intellectual companionship in Western political thought – lay in Engels’s acceptance…
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Soho in 1850
Rosemary Ashton
Two years after the failed 1848 revolutions in all the capital cities of Europe – all, that is, except London – Soho was the area in which the largest number of foreign political exiles were to be found. Here they lodged in cheap rooms…
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