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.
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