Having invested in the original Bonn production of Jonathan Dove’s rumbustious Victorian political farce in 2018, it was bold of Scottish Opera to elect to create an entirely new staging for the work’s UK premiere. But taking control of the means of production – and handing them to Australian director Stephen Barlow, who staged the same composer’s latest opera, Itch, at Holland Park last summer – looks to have been a wise move.
Packed full of vivid stage pictures, Marx in London! is set on a single day – 14 August 1871 – like Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway or Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and uses known events from the political philosopher’s chaotic home life while he was working on Das Kapital at the British Museum. The kinetic designs, by Yannis Thavoris, with video by PJ McEvoy, recreate that institution as well as the Marx family home and a picaresque travelogue though Victorian London.
