Gleefully silly: Scottish Opera’s Marx in London! reviewed

A bloke was working the queue outside the Theatre Royal, selling a newspaper called the Communist. ‘Marxist ideas, alive today!’ he shouted into the Glasgow drizzle. Was he part of the show; a Graham Vick-style touch of Total Theatre? In any case, he didn’t seem to be shifting many units. He might have been even more disappointed by the opera itself: Jonathan Dove’s Marx in London!, here receiving its first UK production, is a new opera buffa with Karl Marx as the protagonist of a gleefully silly period comedy.

Spectator readers already know that left-wing economic theory is intrinsically absurd, but there’s a wicked little frisson in seeing it portrayed as outright farce. The Marx family are at home in Belsize Park on the day their furniture is repossessed: the great economist can’t manage his own household budget.