Comeback! The Karl Marx Musical – Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Comeback! The Karl Marx Musical continues at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London. Picture: Rob Luke

Comeback! The Karl Marx Musical continues at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London until 14 May.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

Imagine Ruddigore merged with The Magic Flute spiced with a whiff of The Phantom of the Opera and quite a lot of pantomime and you’ve got this show. Even the programme notes admit that it is trying to be three different things (parody, political satire and ‘hard-edged rock musical’). It would have been much better all-round if the show could make up its mind what it is wants to be because the inconsistencies are jarring.

The plot, written by Maximilian Reeg, Steffen Lukas, Tobias Kunzel (translated by Pauline Kingsbury and Graham Leybourne) has potential. An unscrupulous banker (Tim Thomas) is prepared to do anything – even pimp his daughter (Maria Karelina) – to save his business. She falls in love with a homeless musician (Jorge Franco) she meets at Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery who, for complicated reasons of expediency, agrees to impersonate the ghost of Karl Marx. It sounds much funnier in summary than it is in the show which barely raises a chuckle from beginning to end.

There are a few strengths. A well choreographed (by Paula Brett) nightclub scene is good fun and there’s an entertaining sequence when Franco’s character is bathed on stage with lots of bubbles and an engagingly silly song. Bryan Hands and Gon Von Zola (who also directs the music from guitars at the side of the rectangular playing space) are entertaining as two very camp policemen at the very end.

The best performance by far in this show is Colleen Daley as the Polish cleaning lady, Mrs Abramovitch. She delivers every line with panache in a deliciously hammed-up accent, dances beautifully and sings with terrific character and musicality. Unfortunately, her fine work serves to highlight the shortcomings of some of the others.

Thomas, for example, is a disappointment. He adopts an exaggerated manner which would probably work if this were a play in which that were the overall style. But everyone else (except the silky villain played by Harry Meacher like an audition for Abanazar) acts naturalistically so it feels uncomfortably incongruous. And Thomas’ singing is very weak indeed. Maria Karelina’s singing is much better than her acting but if musical theatre is to succeed everyone has to be able to do both integrally.

Susan Elkin

www.upstairsatthegatehouse.com/comeback