A Face In The Crowd is a brand new musical based on the book by Sarah Ruhl and Warner Brothers film. The music for this show was written by the well known Elvis Costello and was directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. The show officially opened on September 20th 2024 after beginning previews on September 12th. The show is set in Arkansas in the 1950’s, it’s about a female radio producer named Marcia Jeffries (Anoushka Lucas) who is looking for stories for her struggling small town radio show, she goes to the local jailhouse looking for ‘real people’, rather than the same type of person that usually gets representation in media. Here she meets Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes (Ramin Karimloo) , a man with a rough background who has been charged with being drunk and disorderly. He shows a talent for music and speaking his mind, which is what she is looking for, she has such a good feeling about him that she bails him out and invites him to come on the show. At first he refuses to be on the radio but turns up the next day expecting a slot, which he gets. His performance does very well and he immediately gets a regular slot on her show where he quickly becomes a loved radio personality across America! However things go downhill as he is invited onto a popular television show and gets consumed by the fame. On the TV show he publicly discusses controversial topics, such as politics and his thoughts on immigration and gets a lot of love for it. At the beginning, his real personality and on screen personality were one and the same but over time his real personality, opinions and attitude changed, he seemed like he was just in it for the money and began to resent his fans. This show tells the story of Lonesome Rhodes and Marcia Jeffries’ difficult journey going from small town radio to national television and how they navigate their way through the difficulties. I heard about this show because I am a fan of the leading male’s work in previous musicals, such as The 25th Anniversaries of both Phantom of The Opera and Les Miserables and wanted to see him perform live. At first I was sceptical about seeing it as the reviews were not brilliant, however, after seeing it I completely disagree and think it was a very well written show with amazing songs and characters. The majority of the performance was upbeat and fun to watch with darker themes such as suicide and alcoholism. I felt like the story was very in depth yet easy to follow which was helpful as I went in not knowing much about the storyline other than the short description on the website. The storyline was really interesting and kept me hooked. I enjoyed seeing Lonesome Rhodes’ journey going from drunk in a jail to someone who had an influence over a lot of the country in such a short period of time. The cast were all really talented, it was a relatively small ensemble but all of them played multiple characters, their talent really showed when you could tell immediately that they were playing a different character and when they went back to a character they had played earlier in the show. The main two characters were both played by incredible performers, Anoushka Lucas (Marcia) had a beautiful voice and sung many solos where it was just her on the stage. Ramin Karimloo’s voice is unbelievable, he was putting on an accent and stayed in character whilst belting songs, he was also playing the guitar and ukulele all throughout the show which I really enjoyed. The theatre is quite a small one, depending on where the stage is for the particular show it seats around 400-600 people. The atmosphere just walking in felt really nice, it had dimmed lights not really bright LED lights and a smoke machine next to the stage which helped set the scene for when it started. All the sets and costumes were really well designed, it felt like we had stepped into the 1950’s for a few hours. At the end of the show, during the bows, the cast all seemed genuinely happy to be there and doing the show, this added to the comforting atmosphere. After the performance some of the cast also came out into the bar area to say hello and sign the cast lists (there were no programs but they were giving out free cast lists) and other things that fans wanted signed! Overall it was an amazing experience, I had a brilliant time watching a group of amazing actors performing and telling a really fun and interesting story. I would happily go again however it is only on for a limited time and ends in November. I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to go to London and see a show.