LEADBELLY – A Black man who loves a "joke" – to make Karl Marx sit down and do the business of writing his great work.
FREDERICK ENGELS – The heir to a manufacturing concern. A brilliant, charming capitalist who loves vigorous peasant wenches. He dreams of revolution. For years he has supported the Marx household with money from the family business.
KARL MARX – A genius, a father, a lover of cyrstal lakes and Shakespeare. There is a generator in him of fire and relentlessness.
JENNY VON WESTPHALEN – Marx's deelpy loving wife, romantic and aristocratic. She has too many burdens. But she will endure, protect, and have a nervous breakdown from time to time.
TRINKA, ELLY, LAURIE, SHIRLEE, KRISTA – The daughters. They are jewels in Karl's eyes and ought to have the dowries of princesses. (The roles of the daughters may be played by three actors.)
BABY JOHANN – The son. A little, old man-child, profound and funny. It is as if he was truly born from a cabbage found in the Black Forest.
LENCHEN – The housekeeper. Devoted to the whole family. Practical – but she has intertwined her limbs with Karl in passionate love. And when death comes in her old age she'll lie in a grave next to Jenny and Karl.