Full marks for a dance

-- (Credit: Divya)Karl Marx looks set to meet Broadway and Las Vegas. Das Kapital is being adapted into a musical in Shanghai to show "how the thinking of Karl Marx is as relevant in today's economic crisis as when his book was first published in 1867".

"The entertainment will help ordinary people better understand the financial crisis," said Zhang Jun, a Fudan University economics professor, who is an advisor on the production.

The director, He Nian, told the newspaper China Daily, he will incorporate modern elements to connect the show to people's lives and feelings. The musical will revolve around a group of office workers who discover their boss is exploiting them and each responds differently, he said.

Nien said the idea was inspired by the popularity of a Japanese manga comic book adaptation of Das Kapital published in December.

Three years ago a German theatre group had another bash. But despite an added inducement to attend --a copy of Volume 23 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels for each theatre-goer--spectators said the play was "something of a lecture, at times dry and boring".