DVD/150: TOSCA (Jonathan Kent / Jonathan Haswell, 2011)

A wonderful opportunity to see again Jonathan Kent's thrilling production of TOSCA at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

I first saw Puccini's opera at the English National Opera but it's Jonathan Kent's ROH production that I have now seen twice.

TOSCA made it's London debut in 1900 at Covent Garden and Puccini's tragic, headstrong heroine has appeared practically every year since then, apart from during the World Wars.

We follow one day in the lives of diva Floria Tosca, her Republican lover Caravadossi and their nemesis Chief of Police Scarpia in the dangerous atmosphere of Rome, 1800 as Napoleon's army advances.

Kent's production plays like a runaway train with the late Paul Brown's sumptious sets and costumes, and Mark Henderson's atmospheric lighting adding wonders.

In Jonathan Haswell's film, Tosca is vibrantly sung by Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann is an impassioned Caravadossi and Bryn Terfel is a deliously evil Scarpia.

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite keeper to relive the passion and the pure emotion of Puccini's score in Jonathan Kent's thrilling production.  A special mention must go to the glorious playing of the Royal Opera House orchestra under the baton of Antonio Pappino.

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY at the Gielgud Theatre - no direction home

When GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY premiered at the Old Vic in 2017, the idea of sitting through a musical consisting of Bob Dylan songs left me cold so I avoided it but of course it gathered rave reviews and two Olivier Awards - if it had not been for the HAMILTON juggernaut I am sure it would have been more.  After three months at the Old Vic, it played a further three months at the Noel Coward Theatre, but I still couldn't work up the courage to see it.  So when a revival was announced at the Gielgud Theatre I made sure seats were booked - and I'm glad I did.

We saw it the night after the General Election and as I was in a deep depression I figured nothing would shift my humour but it was actually the perfect show for my state, it lifted me up with excellent ensemble work, fine individual performances, and the chance to have a quiet weep in the dark.  Four years ago, Irish playwright Conor McPherson was approached by Bob Dylan's record company with the suggestion of turning some of his back catalogue into a stage musical but McPherson - known for his powerful dramas which are haunted by unseen malign influences such as THE WEIR - politely refused.  He had never attempted a musical before and couldn't see how Dylan's work would fit into one.

But it preyed on his mind and the idea came to him of setting it in the Minnesota of 1934 (where Dylan would be born seven years later) - a mix of John Steinbeck and Southern Gothic.  He contacted the record company and soon received an e-mail saying Dylan gave the idea a green light and promptly sent him 40 Dylan albums with permission to use any of them in whatever style he wanted, which is wonderfully trusting for such a musical figure.  McPherson knew he wanted the music to be played on instruments used in 1934 and working closely with orchestrator and arranger Simon Hale, he has certainly achieved a very individual sound.  Some purists have argued that songs sound unlike the Dylan originals but it shows how protean the material is which spans from the 1960s onwards and includes a healthy dollop of 1970s and 1980s album tracks... no jukebox musical here.

All the action centres on a ramshackle Duluth boarding house run by husband and wife Nick and Elizabeth Laine, but the bank is threatening to foreclose on it and Elizabeth is slowly submerging into early dementia.  Their son Gene aspires to be a writer but drinks more than he types, and their adopted black daughter Marianne - abandoned as a baby by a non-paying guest - stoically nurses Elizabeth and acts as general housemaid to the guests.

One of their guests is Mrs Neilson, a widow who is waiting for her husband's will to be finalized; she and Nick are clandestine lovers who dream of running away to set up their own hotel with her inheritance.  The only other guests are Mr and Mrs Burke - living in reduced circumstances thanks to the Depression - and their retarded son Elias.  Marianne is five months pregnant but refuses to divulge the father's identity; her adopted father Nick is attempting a 'deal' with the local - and aged - shoe-peddler Mr Perry to marry Marianne for the companionship she will offer, but Marianne resists this arrangement.

One stormy night, two new guests - Reverend Marlowe and Joe Scott - arrive at the rooming house: the former says he is an itinerant holier-than-thou bible-seller and the other a black one-time-contender boxer but are they?  Life over the coming months gets no easier for the occupants of the boarding house until it culminates in Nick and Elizabeth alone at their dining table with the audience on the edge of their seats...

It sounds grim and, in places, it was - McPherson again shadows characters with the unforgettable trauma of dead children - and the action builds to an unbearably tense peak as Nick sees a way out, but the characters are all written in such a humane, non-judgmental way that you are drawn into their sad little stories, hoping for a resolution for them that will make life better.  The whole story is narrated occasionally by the town doctor who knows most of the occupants' secrets and a few of his own, in a style reminiscent of The Stage Director in Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN: he tells the story but is also one step ahead of the action to describe their later lives.

In a nod to the radio days of the 1930s, the solos are sung into old radio microphones which gives the impression that these numbers are more to do with what is happening in the character's minds than simply singing a song to someone.  As I said, the idea of an evening of Bob Dylan songs once had me running a mile from the show but McPherson has chosen songs that were all fairly new to me - at best I knew five of the twenty listed songs - but they are woven so well into the fabric of the story and in the unified sound of Hale's 1930s instruments, that three in particular had me hooked: TIGHT CONNECTION TO MY HEART, SWEETHEART LIKE YOU and TRUE LOVE TENDS TO FORGET.

Conor McPherson directs the show beautifully, always keeping an air of fragile unease while eliciting a wonderful ensemble performance from his 19 cast members but I particularly want to mention the marvellous work of Katie Brayben as the mentally lost Elizabeth, a difficult role to place as most of it she spends glowering at the world from her chair but rising to deliver scorching versions of LIKE A ROLLING STONE - growling through the song of her now untethered life - and a heartbreaking FOREVER YOUNG; Anna-Jane Casey as the secretly doped-up Mrs Burke (and occasional drummer); Rachel John who is wonderfully sympathetic as Mrs Neilsen and in excellent voice; Finbar Lynch's weaselly Reverend Marlowe; Donald Sage Mackay's quietly despairing Nick; Gloria Obiyanyo's secretive and wary Marianne with a voice that sounds like a mix of Tracy Chapman and Joan Armatrading, and Shaq Taylor's proud boxer Joe Scott.  All this and Gemma Sutton too in an all-too-brief role as Gene's departing girlfriend.

Rae Smith's designs are as spare and lean as the Minnesota dust bowl while Mark Henderson delivers another masterclass in story-telling through lighting.  A special mention too for the four-man onstage band who weave such a great musical backdrop throughout the show.

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY is on at the Gielgud until 1st February - run to see this truly remarkable show of people's power to love and endure...

GISELLE at Sadler's Wells - Akram Khan takes Giselle into the dark...

Sometimes you see a production that is so unique, it renders it difficult to put into words exactly what it was you witnessed.  Akram Khan's individual take on GISELLE is such a work.

Commissioned in 2016 by Tamara Rojo for the English National Ballet, Khan's first full-length ballet has toured the country and overseas leaving a trail of superlatives, standing ovations and awards in it's wake.  Stripped of it's usual first act bucolic setting and the second act's gloomy forest grave worthy of Casper David Friedrich, what emerges is a raw, physical interpretation which is short on romanticism but packed with otherworldly tension.

GISELLE was an immediate success when it was first staged in 1841 and has been constantly staged ever since, usually utilizing the choreography of Marius Petipa who staged it for the Russian Imperial Ballet at the end of the 19th Century.  The Royal Ballet's production by Peter Wright has stayed in the repertoire since 1985 and is a vision of romantic tutus and princely doublets.  Khan's is very different.

Instead of bouncy, smiley villagers we are presented with glum, faceless workers pushing against a giant wall with a palpable mournful air, Giselle appears from amongst them and dances with Albrecht who is dressed as one of the workers.  The wall rises to reveal the rich people who live on the other side - thank God the programme had a synopsis as none of this was immediately discernible through the production.  Khan's proletariat are former migrant workers in a clothes factory owned by the rich who have closed it down and the migrants live a hand-to-mouth existence.

As the migrants entertain the rich, Hilarion - who loves our heroine  in vain - provokes a fight with Albrecht which leads to the exposing of the latter as one of the rich slumming it for love of Giselle.  He is assimilated back into the rich tribe - nicely done by him donning a bowler hat - and they retreat back to their privileged life behind the wall.  The outcasts close in on Giselle and disperse leaving her dead.

The second act finds us not in the usual forest graveyard but into the desolate, empty factory where Albrecht remonstrates with the uncaring rich; when they withdraw leaving him to his sorrow he is visited by The Wills, the ghosts of dead factory girls, who revenge themselves on the living.  They summon Giselle to join their ranks after first killing the hapless Hilarion.

Myrtha, the Queen of the Wills chases Albrecht off so they can recruit Giselle into their ghostly ranks but he returns to see his lost love; Giselle forgives Albrecht and protects him against the threats of The Wills but she leaves with them, backing into the darkness forever.  Albrecht is on the immigrants' side of the wall, broken.

It's a truly extraordinary work which utilizes a hard-edged score and soundscape by Vincenzo Lamagna which is based on Adolphe Adam's original GISELLE score but constantly keeps you unsettled and on edge.  Khan's work fully utilizes Tim Yip's design and eerie costumes and Mark Henderson's stark lighting either floods the stage with white light or helps you spot lurking figures in the gloom.

There were remarkably vibrant performances from Erina Takahashi as Giselle who was not the usual ethereal wisp of a character but a physically strong presence on stage and she was matched by the rather wonderful Stina Quagebeur as the statuesque, terrifying Myrtha who in one unforgettable image drags the dead Giselle behind her.  I particularly liked how Khan has the ghostly Wills using traditional ballet pointwork for their scenes - acknowledging the original productions but making them seem eerily not of this earth.  The hapless men were well played by Joseph Caley and Ken Saruhashi as Albrecht and Hilarion.  The ensemble are actually the real stars of the show, strong and silent, changing on a dime from slow hypnotic movements to pelting around the stage at full speed.

By setting his GISELLE in a non-specific place or time, Akram Khan's production is now current, mysterious and timeless.  See it if you can and be haunted by Akram Khan's genius.

TOSCA at Covent Garden - Up On The Roof...

The current score?  English National Opera 1 - Royal Opera 2

So after first seeing TOSCA onstage in 2016 performed by the ENO, we have now seen it at Covent Garden twice in Jonathan Kent's wonderfully fluid and thrilling production.  Yes I know what happens in the end but that's really not the point.  It's being there and experiencing Puccini's huge score played live by the Royal Opera House Orchestra, seeing singers belting out their passions while having your emotions wrung out to dry.

TOSCA had premiered in Rome only six months before it was first performed in London at the Opera House in 1900 and our tragic, headstrong heroine has swept across it's stage practically every year since then, only taking a break when the theatres closed at the outbreak of the World Wars.

Giacomo Puccini insisted that the original Sardou play be stripped by his librettist to the bare minimum, nothing was to distract from the main characters' triangular relationship of fate, namely the diva Floria Tosca and her Republican lover Caravadossi who fall foul to the machinations of chief of police Scarpia in the tinderbox atmosphere of Rome in summer, 1800 as Napoleon's army advances.

Jonathan Kent's 2006 production has been restaged by Andrew Sinclair but the production now stands as a tribute to the designer Paul Brown who died in 2017.  His wonderful designs for TOSCA have an epic quality to them - his Act 1 Sant'Andrea della Valle chapel is wonderfully realized especially in the Te Deum scene, with the front-stage occupied by Scarpia in the gloomy chapel while above and behind it, the main church is ablaze with light as a mass is sung to celebrate the alleged defeat of Napoleon.

The Act 2 palazzo apartment for Scarpia is dominated by a huge statue of a conquering figure with drawn sword which, of course, mirrors the later action where Tosca kills Scarpia - although when she sings her magnificent aria "Vissi d'arte", it's huge size dwarfs her to mirror the supplicating song she is singing.  Brown's Act 3 battlements for the Castel Sant'Angelo are stark and dramatic; after the cluttered and claustrophobic sets, here Tosca and Caravadossi can, for a few minutes at least, sing their love to the heavens with the wind in their hair.

Mark Henderson's lighting was as wonderfully evocative as ever: the Act 1 Te Deum performed in a blaze of light in the main church while Scarpia plots in the shadows of the chapel, the end of Act 2 with the pinpoints of candle-light in Scarpia's palazzo room and then the barely noticeable change from night to grey dawn in Act 3.  Something I had never noticed before is Puccini's use of the bells of Rome which seem to toll all over the city to proclaim the dawn; this is achieved by having sets of bells set up all along the backstage area to get the suitable sound of church-bells near and far and with different tones.  It is wonderfully effective and of course added to the magnificent soundscape provided by the orchestra under the baton of Alexander Joel.

There was a mighty intake of breath before the start when the curtains opened to reveal a woman with a hand-mike; she said that Kristine Opolais (Tosca) and Vittorio Grigolo (Carravadossi) were suffering from colds - "GROAN" said the audience - however they both were still going to perform and asked forgiveness for any shortcomings - "HURRAY" said the audience.

You would never know they were suffering as they both gave full-throated performances as our troubled lovers with both hitting their peak at the right time - Opolais with a heart wrenching "Vissi d'arte" and Grigolo with a spellbinding "And The Stars Shone" both of which were rewarded with huge ovations and lusty cries of 'Brava' (no, it wasn't me doing that!)  Bryn Terfel was a deliciously nasty Scarpia, commanding the stage with great presence and lampshade-rattling vocal power.

TOSCA will be back at Covent Garden next summer; I can get my fix by watching the Royal Opera House's 2012 DVD of Jonathan Kent's production... but... you never know...

FANNY AND ALEXANDER at the Old Vic - life and death on stage....

Ingmar Bergman, one of the handful of visionary directors whose surname can sum-up a genre of film, was also a renowned theatre director so I suspect he would be bemused that some of his most intensely cinematic works have been adapted for the stage.  Unsurprisingly Ivo van Hove has directed three Bergman adaptations - CRIES AND WHISPERS, PERSONA, AFTER THE REHEARSAL - while there have also been stage versions of THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY and SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE.

The most well-known Bergman adaptation was in 1973 when Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler transformed his 1955 film SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT into the musical A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.  Now Matthew Warchus' tenure at the Old Vic gives us a new stage version of Bergman's 1982 epic family drama FANNY AND ALEXANDER which won four Academy Awards, a remarkable feat for a non-English language film.

When I heard about the stage play I did wonder how on earth they were going to make Bergman's highly cinematic semi-autobiographical family comedy-drama which is shot through with themes of supernatural and haunting magic realism work on stage.  What Stephen Beresford - who wrote the wonderful Matthew Warchus film PRIDE - has done with his adaptation is to make it a highly theatrical production with stage effects, jokey front-cloth warnings about the play's length, and choreographed movement replacing realistic playing. 

This immediately makes Beresford's adaptation it's own entity - the original cinema release was shorter than the play - but it's three and a half hour running time swept by thanks to Max Webster's involving production; no mean feat when one considers there are roughly 23 roles.in it. 

Fanny and Alexander are the young children of a theatrical family; their parents Emilie and Oscar Ekdahl own a theatre in Uppsala, Sweden and also are the stars of the theatre company.  Their extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins all live in a large townhouse which is presided over by their Grandmother Helena, a former lead actress who now condescends to playing featured roles such as mothers and queens.  Attended by devoted servants, the Ekdahls gather to celebrate Christmas and plan the upcoming production of HAMLET, also at the table is Helena's old friend and admirer Isaak Jacobi, a puppetmaker.

It takes a while to keep track of all Fanny and Alexander's housemates but through some sharp playing one soon got to know that Uncle Gustav Adolf, although married with a daughter also has designs on the maid Maj - to which she happily complies - and Uncle Carl who is always complaining about his chatterbox German wife Lydia. 

Alexander's worrying visions of a cloaked figure tragically portend Oscar's sudden death from a heart attack which leaves Emilie worried what the future holds for her and her children.  Not long after the funeral however, she announces to Fanny and Alexander that the local bishop Edvard Vergérus has asked her to marry him and she has accepted.  Vergérus, a seemingly gentle if overly-pious man, insists that Emilie and the children move with him to start their new life in his own home where he lives with his infirm aunt, his spinster sister and a maid.

Emilie and her children discover their new home to be a cold and emotionless one, ruled by Vergérus with a puritanical iron fist.  He forbids them from seeing their former family and singles out Alexander for punishment.  When locked in their bedroom, Alexander sees the ghosts of two drowned girls who tell him they are the drowned daughters from Vergérus' first marriage.  The spiteful maid Justina reports this to the bishop who beats Alexander mercilessly.  Emilie manages to escape to see her former mother-in-law Helena to confide her unhappiness but also that she is now pregnant.

Emilie confronts Vergérus and asks for a divorce, he refuses and tells her that if she leaves he will claim custody of Fanny and Alexander on the grounds of desertion.  But there is a greater power than Vergérus' chilly morality... Helena asks her old friend Isaak to help the children escape from their pious prison through his magic illusions and hide them in his puppet workshop.  While there Isaak warns them about his strange nephew Ishmael, who is locked in his own room for safety.

A defiant but weary Emilie tells the angry Vergérus she will never return her children to his house and tricks him into drinking a glass laced with her sleeping powders so she can escape... at the same time as Alexander is drawn to the locked room and meets the mysterious Ishmael who illustrates how thoughts can become reality... 

As I said Max Webster's production remained fast-moving and involving at all times, managing to balance the bleak Vergérus world with the more emotional Ekdahl one; he also knew how to vary the tone from Vergérus' abuse of Alexander to the hilarious scene where Uncles Carl and Gustav Adolf attempted to meet the bishop to try to resolve things only for Gustav Adolf - who had been warned to hide his anger - to explode in foul-mouthed disgust at Vergerus' hypocrisy.  His linking device - of having the servants narrate the events, while putting great emphasis on the different menus served for dinner in each household - was a clever one.

Tom Pye's stylish but simple set designs conjured up Fanny and Alexander's different environments superbly as did Mark Henderson's nuanced lighting.  From a rotating cast of four pairs of child actors, Zaris Angel Hator as Fanny and, in particular, Guillermo Bedward as Alexander were very good.

Among a strong cast, there were fine performances from Thomas Arnold as the mournful Uncle Carl, Karina Fernandez as the drab maid Justina (although not outshining Harriet Andersson in the film), Vivian Oparah as the life-affirming maid Maj, Lolita Chakrabarti as the icy Helena Vergérus, Catherine Walker's passionate Emilie and Sargon Yelda as the fated Oscar.

In a trio of excellent performances, special praise to Jonathan Slinger as the fun-loving and volatile Uncle Gustav Adolf, Michael Pennington as the genial but mysterious Isaak and Kevin Doyle as Edvard Vergérus, who while making you hate him, suggested the emotionally-scared man behind the monster.

But ruling the stage - as well as her character ruled her family - Penelope Wilton was a glorious Helena: it was all there, the former stage leading lady irked at no longer getting the glamorous roles, the indomitable matriarch, and the woman who realizes she is still able to love and be loved.  It was a role made for her to play as it echoed the strong no-nonsense women she has played in THE SECRET RAPTURE, ...BERNARDA ALBA, TAKEN AT MIDNIGHT and THE CHALK GARDEN.

An excellent choice to celebrate Ingmar Bergman's centenary, and his wonderful all-too-human characters, and the perfect production to do it with.  After all, Bergman himself said that film "was the costly, exacting mistress" but theatre was "the faithful wife".

I want to see the film again now!

TOSCA at Covent Garden - Love and Death in Rome...

In 2016, after seeing a marvellous English National Opera production, we had left the Coliseum wondering "Wow, what would TOSCA be like if done by the Royal Opera?"  Well I know now...  Wow!

TOSCA made it's London debut at Covent Garden in 1900 and Puccini's tragic, headstrong heroine has swept across it's stage practically every year since then, interestingly the only two noticeable breaks were in the periods during the two World Wars.

Giacomo Puccini and his librettist clashed during it's writing as the composer wanted to strip back Sardou's original play, cutting his five-act drama to three acts; Puccini succeeded and the opera is remarkable in it's through-line - cutting through the usual operatic padding to tell the tragic tale of the diva Floria Tosca and her Republican lover Caravadossi who fall foul to the machinations of chief of police Scarpia in the tinderbox atmosphere of Rome in summer, 1800 as Napoleon's army advances..

Jonathan Kent's production was first seen in 2006 and again I find it remarkable that his theatre productions from that era are lost in time but his opera production is still seen 12 years on.  Be that as it may, Kent rose to the challenge excellently; he said at the time "What I admire about it, quite apart from the thrilling music, is its theatre craft ... It's a taut, sinewy melodrama, exquisitely put together. There isn't an ounce of flesh on it ... That's what interested me: to find a way within that hurtling narrative to examine the relationships and its themes of sex, power and death".

Sadly the production now stands as a tribute to the designer Paul Brown who died last November.  His wonderful designs for TOSCA have an epic quality to them - his Act 1 Sant'Andrea della Valle chapel is wonderfully realized especially in the Te Deum scene, with the front-stage occupied by Scarpia in the gloomy chapel while above and behind it, the main church is ablaze with light as a mass is sung to celebrate the alleged defeat of Napoleon.

His Act 2 palazzo apartment for Scarpia is dominated by a huge statue of a conquering figure with drawn sword which, of course, mirrors the later action where Tosca kills Scarpia, and his Act 3 battlements for the Castel Sant'Angelo were stark and dramatic - oddly enough I missed the huge sweeping wing across the top of the set which references the enormous statue of the avenging angel atop the building (I've been there you know!).

Mark Henderson's lighting was wonderfully evocative as well, particularly towards the end of Act 2 in the pinpoints of candle-light in Scarpia's palazzo room while the Covent Garden orchestra made Puccini's score come to resounding life under the baton of Dan Ettinger.

Canadian Adrianne Pieczonka played Tosca with a willful passion although I think the English National Opera's Keri Alkema edged her for performance.  However her singing of Tosca's great aria "Vissi d'arte" was quite lovely.  Maltese singer Joseph Calleja gave a robust performance as Caravadossi with an equally marvellous rendition of "And The Stars Shone" in the last act.  Gerald Finley from Canada was a very hissable Scarpia and fully deserved the panto boos he got at his curtain call!

I think I still have a way to go to fully appreciating opera but TOSCA is now a firm favourite.

YOUNG MARX at the Bridge Theatre - Carry On Comrade...

Two weeks ago we visited London's latest performing space, the rather clunky-named Bridge Theatre, which is situated between London and Tower Bridges.  I find it a frankly ghastly part of town, soulless and ugly, but the theatre space should give it a bit more promise.  The theatre is the brainchild of Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr who made such a success at the National Theatre when they were artistic director and executive director.

It will take a while to "warm up": the main foyer is fairly drab and oddly-lit from fashionable single bulbs hanging from the ceiling. the security staff out front were hardly welcoming and the trendy menu/bar doesn't inspire confidence.  However the loos are plentiful and there is a very handy stalls foyer space by the auditorium, which in itself reminded me of an enlarged Cottesloe/Dorfman apace.  The side stalls, where we were seated, were angled towards the stage but at the cost of leg-room.

The auditorium was about three-quarters full for the Bridge Theatre's launch production, Richard Bean and Clive Coleman's anachronistic YOUNG MARX which gives a whacking star part to Rory Kinnear as the struggling Karl Marx and is directed by - yes you guessed - Nicholas Hytner.

The thought "Blackadder does Marx" settled into my head very early on and I could not shake that through it's running time.  It gives a comic spin to Marx in his refugee years in Soho and uses many instances from his real life to comic effect - his regular visits to the cupboard to hide from creditors and sponging fellow-refugees, the near-poverty that he and his family struggled through, the attempts to pawn the incongruously expensive possessions of his high-born wife Jenny, and the friendship with fellow political thinker Friedrich Engels is turned into a comedy double-act.

The trouble is, it's just not funny enough.  There are a couple of humorous moments and set-ups but they don't quite land - to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, it aims to soar but agrees to perch.  Bean and Coleman's gags keep coming but arrives at a skidding halt when a death happens in the young family but we are being asked to be sorry for an under-written child role and you wonder why the people are so upset when the dead boy has been such an offstage presence.

Rory Kinnear certainly gives a barn-storming performance but it's also a charmless one and you really cannot understand why his egotistical Karl is seen to be the life and soul of the party.  He is also settling into a shtick where he hits consonants like a man hitting a cow's arse with a banjo - a single line that has words beginning with p, b or d are verbal explosions which become very wearing.

Against his bells and smells performance, Oliver Chris was delightfully witty and wry as Engels, frustrated by Marx's inability to settle down and write his long-promised manifesto.  The usually-dependable Nancy Carroll is wasted as Jenny Marx, forever on the verge of leaving her unreliable husband and being noble, and Laura Elphinstone - while giving a good performance as the Marx's maid Nym - again is making bricks from the straw supplied by Bean and Coleman, the women roles are just cyphers.

There was a nice performance by Eben Figueiredo as the excitable Konrad Schramm, a committed revolutionary who hero worships Marx to the extent that he takes his hero's place in a duel - yet another actual incident - and Miltos Yerolemou makes an impression as the explosively angry French political activist Emmanuel Barthélmey but otherwise the supporting cast hide behind wigs and hats, giving hardly noticeable performances.

The revolving set by Mark Thompson was fun as it quickly changed from hovel to reading room to pub backroom but it's distance from the audience made the play again seem too remote and the production benefited from Mark Henderson's moody lighting.

The play ends on almost a Chekhovian note with Marx finally sitting down to write his great work surrounded by his family and close friends which was a nice way to end but I suspect the writers had just blown themselves out.  Nicholas Hytner directs at a frenetic pace but it eventually reflects the slightly desperate air of the writing to be more than it is.