A Face within the Crowd, assessment: Elvis Costello’s satirical musical isn’t excessive sufficient to skewer Trumptheinsiderinsight

Howdy accomplice. Seems, for those who communicate all folksy-like, eat crimson meat, inform tales about Uncle Joe, and possibly do a little bit of xenophobia, you possibly can turn into a demagogue too. So reveals current historical past, and so reveals Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg’s 1957 movie A Face within the Crowd, which adopted a drifter who turns into a celeb and ultimately a politician, fomenting ever wilder and extra excessive views alongside the way in which. No have to ponder why playwright Sarah Ruhl and musician Elvis Costello have chosen this second to adapt it as a musical.

Ramin Karimloo, higher identified for large West Finish and Broadway roles in Phantom and Les Mis, performs Lonesome Rhodes, who begins the story locked up within the native slammer for being drunk and disorderly. Candy-minded native radio DJ Marcia Jeffries (an always-effortless Anoushka Lucas), needs to place the voices of actual individuals – “from county gala’s [and] soup kitchens” – on the airwaves and picks him out. He’s successful. An enormous one. A couple of dozen cracker-barrel aphorisms later, and so they’ve acquired a TV deal. Quickly Lonesome is flogging vitality drugs to thousands and thousands and advising a presidential hopeful on find out how to enchantment to the typical American.

From Costello’s opening quantity – a vibrant and breezy music about Marcia’s radio present, all fluttering melodies and jaunty piano – the vibe is type of children’ TV. Gone is the tough edge and seriousness of function that makes Kazan’s movie barely terrifying. Right here, as tailored by Ruhl, the story is a bit schmaltzy, the politics fairly hand-holdy, as if the manufacturing doesn’t fairly belief us to make the Trumpian connections ourselves.

With its cheery Nineteen Fifties palette and poster-paint backdrop, Kwame Kwei-Armah’s manufacturing by no means fairly breaks out of its one-dimensionality. Sure, the rhinestones and American flags and weapons amass, and there’s a way of drifting garishly into American nightmare. However, principally, it has the satirical chew of a Hallmark film, with the identical romantic trajectory.

Credit score to Karimloo and Lucas for doing the very best with ciphers. In a task that’s been bolstered from the movie, Lucas as Marcia manages to carry staunchness and kindness in the identical breath, and when she sings, she reveals a vulnerability that’s stunning to observe. Karimloo has a good sprint of charisma, although excels extra within the homely folksiness of the early scenes than the ghoulish demagoguery of the latter ones.

The moments when Costello’s songs kick in are a delight, romping by way of the good American songbook in all its colors, from people, soul, nation and western – rattling snares, twanging bass – by way of to gospel, barbershop, army march, and greater than a touch of Rodgers and Hammerstein within the anthemic title quantity. It’s a very good rating, stuffed with witty lyrics and altering textures.

The e-book, although, can’t fairly choose whether or not to put on its allegory flippantly or hammer it residence – so it veers between the 2. And the larger downside is that it’s constructed of the identical bones because the factor it’s attempting to critique: the vapidity of the American dream and the way simply it wins individuals over with low-cost sentiment. Can it actually dig into the self-love of the entire thing when it’s structured as a Hollywood story that’s simply as shallow?

Possibly extra fatally, regardless of making Rhodes’s opinions extra outrageous than within the movie, it doesn’t even come to the degrees of absurdity and depravity that actual life has attained in recent times. What was prescient in 1957, feels, seven many years later, like fond nostalgia. If a satire is much less excessive than its goal, you do type of surprise, what’s the purpose?

‘A Face within the Crowd’ is on the Younger Vic till 9 November