A Face in the Crowd, the film, directed by Elia Kazan, scripted by Budd Schulberg and acted by Andy Griffiths and Patricia Neal in 1957, is a hard act to follow. Kazan’s direction and the actors’ performances carry such a terrific punch.
The short story has now been turned into a musical. The music and lyrics are by Elvis Costello. The book is by Sarah Ruhl. The songs are pleasant enough but they hold up the action.
A drunk and disorderly loud-mouthed drifter is in jail. A radio producer discovers he is a guitar-playing soul singer and offers him a slot on her show and she gives him a new name, Lonesome Rhodes.
His country boy personality and folksy talk win him a big audience and he graduates to TV. His fan base grows so wide nationally, he is capable of swinging elections. The clownish entertainer and unpredictable prankster becomes a megalomaniac force totally out of control.
Ramin Karimloo plays Lonesome Rhodes and is fine if you haven’t seen Andy Griffith’s definitive charismatic performance so effectively photographed in black and white close-up. Anoushka Lucas plays the radio producer and she is at her best and most convincing when she sings the show’s best song, “I am no man’s woman.”
The supporting actors have to play so many roles; their having to constantly quick change their clothes, props and personalities adds to the unreality.
Kwame Kwei-Armah’s production doesn’t have the movie’s gritty rawness. The staging is very bitty. The satire on presidential campaigns lacks real bite and feels like an extended revue sketch. What is missing, too, are the movie’s big hysterical screaming crowd scenes.
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