In a West End theatre, a young actor hears a disembodied voice coaching his singing. It’s the start of an icky ghost-on-human romance
This ghost story set in a West End theatre is creakier than the old wooden floorboards on stage. It’s a gender reversal of Phantom of the Opera with a female phantom: wildly talented composer Eve (Amanda Jiang), who died tragically in a theatre fire. Or did she? That’s the question for earnest young actor Christian (Charlie Goddard) cast as the lead in a revival of Eve’s hit musical, City of Masks. It’s being staged in the very theatre where she died. Then Christian starts hearing a ghostly disembodied voice coaching his singing.
Part of the problem with the film is a clash of acting styles. Jiang seems to have stepped out of a David Lynch film to play Eve; sensual and mysterious. Meanwhile, actor Deano Bugatti Mitchison channels Al Pacino in Scarface levels of intensity to play the revival’s director, coked-up theatre impresario Victor – surely the only director in the West End to keep a loaded gun in his desk drawer
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