After reviewing Nicholas Hytner’s book Balancing Acts earlier this year, I just had to get myself along to his very first production at the brand new Bridge Theatre, founded by Hytner and collaborator Nick Starr.
Young Marx, a new play by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman, is a fabulous romp through Victorian Soho and the life Marx established around himself with his long-suffering wife Jenny von Westphalen; their housemaid Helene Demuth, known as Lenchen or Nym and not only the mother of one of Marx’s children but also, the play hints, the mother of at least some of his ideas as well; and their friend and benefactor Friedrich Engels, who of course lived in Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill. See the iLPH review of Mrs Engels by Gavin McRea here: https://iloveprimrosehill.com/2015/05/03/mrs-engels-by-gavin-mccrea/
Take a look at the gallery below for the cast.
The new theatre is completely splendid, with comfortable seats trimmed with brown leather, a large sweeping bar with plenty of room for the whole audience to gather, delicious buttery Madeleines at the interval and excellent Champagne (which felt slightly wrong when watching a play about the birth of Communism but hey ho).
https://iloveprimrosehill.com/2017/04/29/balancing-acts-by-nicholas-hytner/
© 2017 Joanna Reeves, all rights reserved.