The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

One of Robert Tressell’s great tricks with his posthumously published broadside against capitalism was to critique a world-defining system not via tales of bloodshed and revolution, but through a meagre bunch of English painters and decorators. Who needs the travails of Dr Zhivago when you have the grumblings of White Van Man?

No matter what your political sensibility, Townsend Productions’ adaptation of the 1914 book is a riotous joy of a show. Through a heady mix of just two performers, multiple costume changes, puppetry, folk songs, and cartoonish staging it shows how Big Issues are in the weave and weft of even the most innocuous activities.

The mundanity in question is the refurbishment of a grand old house in provincial England. Mr Rushden, a property developer, and his Scrooge-like henchman Hunter, employ and underpay a rag bag bunch to make it habitable, before selling it on. While the top dogs count their massive profits, the workers subsist on lower and lower wages, undercutting one another to ensure another day’s work. All the while they toast their employers. Owen, an artist, is the only one to point out the system’s self-defeating absurdity.

Like the book, it sermonises without apology. One sequence uses a loaf of bread and two audience members to show The Great Money Trick – how workers spend their wages on the very items they produce. The money always floats back to the top, out of the reach of those who need it most.

Thankfully great lashings of humour buoy these moments of Marxist self-importance. Townsend Productions may well have found a way to make Das Kapital funny.