The creators of this new musical might seem to be on a hiding to nothing. The original Oscar-winning film of 1968 starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight as Ratso and Joe Buck respectively – low-rent hustlers in feral New York – already has attached to it some of the best music ever written for film.
Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talkin’ is an eternal hit and John Barry’s theme featuring Toots Thielemans’ achingly soulful harmonica is the very sound of solitude. So why would anyone think that what this story needs is more music?
This new musical with a book by playwright Bryony Lavery attempts to slay the ghost of the film by declaring itself to be adapted from James Leo Herlihy’s original novel. Yet it can’t escape the movie. The first number is Nilsson’s impossible-to-ignore classic. From then the score by the Novello-winning Francis “Eg” White takes over. It serves the story well and there is a proper showstopper in the form of Whatever It Is You’re Doing smokily sung by a captivating Tori Allen-Martin as Cass.
