Le Capital Et Son Singe at Theatre National

It is a foundational text of contemporary history. It took the German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883), drawing on Britain’s industrial reality, twenty years to write. And yet Capital: Critique of Political Economy remains a poorly known work. Glaring truth about reality for some; unintelligible, outdated caricature for others ...

With a touch of audacity mixed with temerity, the French director Sylvain Creuzevault (Le Père Tralalère and Notre Terreur) tackles this ideological monument with unparalleled freedom. "It’s not pie in the sky or Utopia (...) This is comedy, pure and simple", he warns.

Fifteen actors on stage, a full-size theatre... This Capital will be located there! With the required revolutionary accessories, gnashing of teeth, a gallery of the usual suspects (the capitalist, the landowner, the factory worker from another era, the peasant ...) and a script without taboos, this play is, at the same time, both monstrously funny and delightfully caustic.

We are with Shakespeare, with Brecht and in the local pub. With a script that shouts out the great ideas of Marx (the exploitation of the workers, communal property, the value of labour, salaried wage slaves...) and forces us to acknowledge that, in the words of Syvlain Creuzevault, this "occidental vampire with all the strength of history, with its inbred violence and endless tricks" is capitalism. Capitalism yesterday and capitalism today.