Young Marx at the new Bridge theatre

They were free on the Sunday I went. You got two for production of a ticket. They tasted like a melt-in-your-mouth sweet sponge cake, with accompanied slightly oily pleasant sugary lingering on your taste buds after each bite, and were substantial and small enough that you could indulgently dip them in your tea or coffee, like a biscuit, if you weren't embarrassed about it. They came in batches of six for £4 or £4.50, if you had to buy them. I thought they were super tasty and could eat a ton of them!

As for the play, it was mid-ranking Richard Bean, a sitcom about young Marx, where we were given three episodes: a shaky pilot, which I call "Who stole the silver?" a stonking episode, firing on all comic cylinders, which I call "Who's Your Father?" (free pun included), and the weird episode where everybody acts seriously (which usually comes much later than episode 3 in a real sitcom, as it's designed to deepen our affection for the characters, which I call "Sad Days").

I enjoyed episode 2 very much, but episodes 1 and 3 were middling.

More than anything, this expanded my appreciation for Rory Kinnear. I had him down as a "character actor", as his Hamlet, while well-spoken, lacked charisma. By the same token, his Iago was riveting because of his non-descriptness, his oh-so-average London-boy-out-on-the-town type utterly sinister through his recognisability and ordinariness. His Creature in the tv show "Penny Dreadful" showed him to be this character actor extraordinaire, as he bled pathos through his monster make-up, and stole all his scenes.

But he really carries this so so sitcom. In comedy, he has, in himself, not as a character, all the charisma needed to carry a show. In the second episode (see above), very funny!

3 and a half stars for the show
4 stars for the Madeleines
4 and a half stars for the theatre