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Just another unhinged celebrity
PETER MASON appreciates the songs and spectacle but misses attention-grabbing intrigue in Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of the US movie
young vic

A Face in the Crowd
Young Vic, London


 
THERE’S not a great deal wrong with this musical adaptation of the 1957 US film of the same name: the two leads are excellent, the music and lyrics by Elvis Costello are a cut above the ordinary and the sets and costumes are at times dazzling.

What it lacks, though, is a storyline that offers any attention-grabbing intrigue. 

From the off it’s clear what will happen to the two main characters, Marcia Jeffries (Anoushka Lucas), an ambitious small-town radio broadcaster, and Lonesome Rhodes (Ramin Karimloo), a semi-hobo songwriter and storyteller whom she discovers languishing in the county jail. 

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