PETER MASON is gripped by a novel that confronts corporate callousness with those prepared to act to bring about change
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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
Ramin Karimloo and Anoushka Lucas in A Face in the Crowd
[Ellie Kurttz]
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
A mesmerising novel by Mexican Daniel Saldana Paris, and fierce poetry by Peruvian Dalmacia Ruiz-Rosas Samohod, and Jonathan Gonzalez
PAUL BUHLE an RAYMOND TYLER enjoy an issue of the radical comic WW3 that gives a platform to Palestinian artists, and uncensored commentary
JAMES WALSH wallows in the triumphant reappearance behind the mic of former Morning Star columnist Chris T-T
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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