The first question to arise upon hearing of “Marx in Soho,” a play by Howard Zinn, would naturally be this: why is there a play of Karl Marx and his ideas at this time? It has been over a hundred and fifty years after the Communist Manifesto, and with the dictatorship in the name of communism displayed in Russia, China and North Korea, the general public does not regard Marx with a positive light.

This did not stop Bob Weick, in his act as Karl Marx, in fiercely defending the revolutionary socialist. Alone on the stage, he paced around in a heated one-sided discussion on Marx’s ideas. It was a one-man play; Weick was the only one on the stage, and he was the only one who talked throughout the whole show. There was no evident involvement of the audience, aside from showing them simple props of books and articles, and shouting out questions with no expected contributions.

This forced the focus onto Marx’s ideas. His personal life and context of the time were used only to provide challenges and support to his arguments. This was also aligned to Weick’s argument that the ideas are separate from the person—that personal flaws are not necessarily linked to the arguments presented by the person, and the time in which the ideas were spawned does not necessary limit them to the era. In other words, that ideas are immortal.

The setup of the stage, which consisted only of simple props, two chairs and a table, and a stool in a corner, is also notable in its simplicity. The empty chair and the scarf placed upon it alluded to the second character—Marx’s wife, Jenny—but only enough to enforce Marx’s quality as a round, sympathetic character. His costume was not very dramatic at all, either, and none of the colors were very vivid. The simplicity not only assisted the focus on the ideas rather than the setting or the story, but also made the play more relatable for the present. There were few details to make the audience belittle the play into a theoretical story of a time gone past, nor was the modernity of it forced enough to be unconvincing.

What more could prove the immediate relevance to Marx’s ideas, theories and his criticisms than the sheer consecutive size of the audience that enabled Weick to perform the same show, over 250 times so far? Every detail of the show was designed to be relatable—to convince the audience that Marx and his writings are still relevant to this time, and are crucial for insightful searches into the system of modern world. And on this mark, it was definitely successful—the people walked out of the play wondering why, and how, the problems stated by a man who had lived nearly two hundred years ago, are still far from solved in the twenty-first century.