THEATRE 
Full disclosure: I booked this inaugural production at Nicholas Hytner’s and Nick Starr’s brave venture at the One Tower Bridge development (arguably the most significant new commercial theatre of scale in London in several decades) less for the play then for the experience of the building and space-and in this respect, I was not disappointed. It’s modern and sleek without going overboard on design features, an elegance of economy and modesty ruling throughout. The foyer offers an appreciable spaciousness, a nest of pendant lamps wrapped in scrims of gold fabric casting a honeyed light upon the surroundings-even when quite populated, as the floor was on the Saturday matinee I attended, it’s possible to sculpt a personal space without feeling the crowd bearing down upon you.
Inside the 900-seat performance space, the seating of which is adjustable for each production (amenable to traditional proscenium, promenade or thrust staging), it’s warm indirect lighting, lush curves of comfy seating (a rust-tinted blend of traditional fabric with flecks of leather) and soft bridgework of steel and wood, an unfussy and classy utilitarianism.
The theatre is a private enterprise, funded by a group of investors, and will in no way chase after government or charitable subsidies-profit will depend solely on revenues generated from their programme (quite a world and challenge away from the founders’ previous tenure at the National Theatre, justly celebrated for the innovations and progress they brought to the august institution, and their ability to abundantly increase audience numbers). Hytner and Starr intend for equal representation for female playwrights and directors-the initial season features new pieces from Nina Raines, Lucinda Coxon and Lucy Prebble, and Laurie Sansom will direct the upcoming Nightfall.
As for the opening work, Richard Bean’s and Clive Coleman’s befuddling Young Marx, which seems to want to degrade Marx’s early life and struggles in London’s Soho neighbourhood to the level of farce or pantomime, I’m mystified. 
Suggesting that in his experiences in impecunious straits as a refugee Marx located the raw material for his future titanic work of socioeconomic philosophy Das Kapital is evocative, but the headlong, madcap pace, with every action pitched at a degree of hysteria, more often resembles a routine episode of Friends relocated to late 19th century England, constant streams of grand entrances and exits from the Marx flat with ample helpings of gesture and stage business (a disheartening majority of peripheral characters are broadly proportioned). 
So much of the material is pushed to such comic extremes that by the time the playwrights address more somber themes (a death, a burial, an outpouring of grief), it’s difficult to feel very moved, as the emotional foundations of the script haven’t been properly built. 
Bean and Coleman insist that all action and incident is based in what is accepted fact (Marx lived in poverty in a small flat with his family, he impregnated his housemaid, he and his wife lost children, Friedrich Engels supported him financially for a great part of his life and somehow agreed to name himself as the father of Marx’s lovechild, he duelled on Hampstead Heath, squabbled in the reading rooms of the British Library), but I can’t believe these life events tumbled along with the comedic tenor they assume here (the less said about the atrocious scene of the screwball brawl in the British Library, the better-like a very misjudged sequence in an earnest, but wayward, university production).
It’s a reduction of a complicated and faceted life to an easily digestible trifle. Rory Kinnear bounds across the stage with selfish aplomb, a figure drinking his way through local pubs, cheerfully oblivious and ungrateful towards the loved ones working hard on his behalf-he’s meant to be a monstrous symbol of the overweening artist, a solipsistic behemoth, somehow excused because of perceived genius. Nothing here suggests the revolutionary man who will go on to write a landmark work. The handsome revolving set morphs smoothly from the squalid interior of the Marx residence to the back room of a pub where the league of rebels plot against the establishment to the streets and byways of Soho, capped off by a gray roofscape of chimneys and vents, which get a surprisingly fair amount of use. 
The material strains towards contemporary resonance with its themes of refugee crisis and border issues, the suspicions of authority towards foreigners, but the lightheartedness defeats the attempt. I could have done with less of the boisterousness of Marx and more of the reflection and steadiness of Engels (embodied with grace and integrity by Oliver Chris). 
One of the most effective scenes is of a late-evening drunken confessional conversation between the two combative friends, the play easing off for a brief moment from its incessant hectic thrust-otherwise, it treats their relationship like a music hall duo. The closing scene, with its underscoring of domestic tranquillity, Marx finally sat down, in the nascent stages of writing his opus, alludes to the idea of collaboration, discussing ideas and fielding proposals from his family and close friend. Young Marx continues through 31 December
tom///out 