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| Louie Piday, Linda Mulrean, Linda Swenson, Deborah Loomis, Katherine Helmond, Lizabeth Pritchett, Zenobia Conkerite, Ralph Carter. |
THE KARL MARX PLAY
[Comedy/Biographical/Economics/Family/Period/Politics] A: Rochelle Owens; D:
Mel Shapiro; S: Karl Eigsti; L: Roger Morgan; M: Galt McDermott; P: American
Place Theatre; T: American Place Theatre (OB); 3/16/73-4/14/73 (32)
An unconventional burlesque treatment of Karl Marx (Leonard
Jackson) as a poverty-stricken family man in mid-19th-century
London, where he suffers from boils and the inability to get started on Das Kapital.
Among those attempting to break his writer’s block is the 20th-century
Black folksinger Leadbelly (Norman Matlock), who appears anachronistically to
sing ballads composed by Galt McDermott, composer of Hair. Leadbelly is a sort of Everyman
character from the future who acts as a goad in the process of historical
inevitability. Marx’s money problems are also much present, and the writer’s
wife, Jenny (Katherine Helmond), hopes that the unwritten opus will one day
make the family rich. Marx finally decides to sit on his painful boils and get
on with the tome that will change history.
The Karl Marx Play was
written a a broad, free-style comic mélange of theatrical devices, including
direct address, an onstage five-woman chamber orchestra that also acted as Marx’s
daughters, present-day language, and musical interpolations. Its somewhat
outlandish staging featured a Black actor as Marx and an Asian one (Randy [Randall
Duk] Kim) as Frederick Engel. It incorporated a nicely designed symbolic
setting, part of which consisted of plaster figures “that presumably represent
the waiting, laboring classes,” according to Clive Barnes.
The critics weren’t notably impressed, other than to commend
Owens’s ambition. "Much of the fooling turns foolish,” wrote Edith Oliver,
“and the ardor tiresome.” Barnes thought the show “predictable,” and Walter
Kerr was bored by its endless “randomness.” Martin Gottfried, however, believed
it to be Owens’s best play, citing its comic insights, sensitive understanding
of Marx, and technical accomplishments. Most agreed about the excellence of the décor, music, and
performances.
