Crowe's shockingly good set adds the feelgood factor

The Gladiator’ star charged enthusiastically through covers of Dire Straits and Johnny Cash, along with some original songs, on the Acoustic Stage. Louis Chilton was charmed

- Louis Chilton

He may have had a Beautiful Mind, but does he have a beautiful voice? The idea that Russell Crowe can’t sing is one of those snarky takes that’s been etched into stone, thanks largely to the Australian actor’s breathy Javert in Les Misérables (2012). And yet, as he marched out onto Glastonbury’s tented Acoustic Stage on a sun-baked Saturday afternoon, to perform with his Indoor Garden Party music project, you would have thought he was every inch the rock star.

It’s easy to be cynical about Crowe’s reinvention as a blues-rock crooner; the words “vanity project” hung in the air like the dust that was, by this point in the weekend, filling festivalgoers’ lungs in every mud-caked thoroughfare.

The Nice Guys star, a busker in his youth, is not the first actor to have reached for the mic at Worthy Farm. Jeff Goldblum regaled Glastonbury crowds in 2019 with a set of easy-listening jazz numbers — as well as the theme from Jurassic Park, because, well, this was Jeff Goldblum after all. But Crowe, to his credit, took the brief seriously: there were to be no Gladiator motifs, no rotely warbled “One Day More”.

Ahead of the gig, he told Sky News: “Chuck all the celebrity bullshit aside, or the fame for doing some other job. You’ll see a serious band and it’s full of monster musicians who know what they’re doing.”