The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Review

Southwark Playhouse, London

****

Book & lyrics by Jethro Compton

Music & lyrics by Darren Clark

Directed & designed by Jethro Compton

Molly Osborne and Jamie Parker

This new musical is a fine fusion of music, song and acting. Taking F.Scott Fitzgerald’s famous /short story of a baby born as an old man who then spends his life getting younger, Jethro Compton and Darren Clark have crafted the yarn into a fabulous fable.

Compton has translated Fitzgerald’s tale to a Cornish setting and the show proves to be a lovingly crafted tribute to that region. With Button being born aged 70 in 1918, the narrative also offers an eclectic perspective on the 20th century.

The musical had an earlier outing at the other Southwark Playhouse space in 2019, where the cramped stage was cluttered with the trappings of the Cornish fishing communities. In this new larger venue those trappings are still there, only now they enhance rather than overpower the musical. And much as this show and its songs are all about time, so too have the last 4 years allowed the show to mature beautifully. No longer is Benjamin portrayed by a puppet, but in a stroke of inspired casting, Jamie Parker plays the title role. Wisely avoiding prosthetics to show his reverse-ageing, Parker instead relies upon a few distinctive costume touches (bowler hat and pipe suggesting his dotage) and above all delivers a masterclass in performance, convincing us of his age throughout the show as we witness his transformation from being aged 70 to around 20 or so.

As his life, love, and family age around him, Parker elicits genuine and profound sympathy as he inches towards the poignant and inevitable endgame that we know awaits him. 

It’s not just Parker though. Compton has assembled a magnificent multi-role company of 11 who perfectly pick up all manner of parts. Notable amongst this troupe is Molly Osborne as Elowen, Benjamin’s love and then his wife. All the company are magnificently voiced and it is a credit to them that Compton’s fast-moving lyrics (that occasionally drift too far into exposition) are crystal clear.

Credit too to these actors for creating one of the finest actor-musician troupes ever assembled. The range of instruments played is orchestral in its range with these multi-skilled performers offering up a full complement of string, wind and percussion and creating a sound that is, quite simply, gorgeous.

If there’s a flaw to the piece it’s in the second half, where the credibility of Benjamin’s return to his ultimate nativity would be a tough nut for any dramatist to crack. The show’s creatives wisely avoid dressing Parker as an adult-baby, but there are moments towards the end when perhaps a little too much is asked of the audience’s powers of imagination.  

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a bold and brilliant contribution to the canon of new musical writing.

Runs until 1st July

Photo credit: Juan Coolio

The Great Gatsby

Wilton's Music Hall , London

****

Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Adapted for the stage and directed by Peter Joucla

Eleanor Howell and Kyle Redmond-Jones

The Great Gatsby returns to Wilton’s Music Hall, marking the hall’s recently completed restoration with a revival of the 2012 production, last staged just before the venue closed for repair. Whilst the  impressive auditorium has been mended and plastered, Wilton's remains a work in progress and this underlying sense of chic dilapidation adds a curious sense of credibility to the decaying world in which F. Scott Fitzgerald set his adulterous tale of repressed love in 1920s  New York state.

The staging is simple but inspired. Minimal use of props and effective lighting denote the locations that shift from Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s mansion, to Gatsby’s palatial home across the bay, to the Wilson’s grubby garage. In an inspired move, the parties at Gatsby’s home, attended in the novel by hoardes of vacuous freeloaders, are represented at Wilton’s by the house lights coming up and the cast walking amongst the rows of seats, suggesting that the audience of several hundred are Gatsby’s nameless guests. Music and vocals, either background or period songs are, with the exception of an occasional harmonica, all un-mic’d a-cappella. The cast are vocally excellent, providing an effective occasional musical backcloth that impressively includes even a snatch of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Lead chaacters drop in and out of the ensemble as needed, donning owl-like black rimmed specs, a neat nod to the novel’s description of oculist Dr Eckleburg’s advertising hoarding spectacles, when assuming singing responsibilitites

The cast are grand throughout. As Gatsby, Kyle Redmond-Jones maintains the affected air of the mysterious millionaire perfectly. Looking like a refined Matt Damon, he surveys the crowds at his parties with appropriate aloofness whilst his “old sport” mannerisms are delivered with such clipped yet gentle precision that it easy to understand how Eleanor Howell’s fragile Daisy could be in love with the enigmatic recluse, especially when he is compared to her boorish philandering husband Tom. Howell portrays Daisy’s misery with profound perception and when she speaks of knowing, even on her wedding day, that her marriage to Tom was a loveless void, the sadness is excruciating. Christopher Brandon plays Tom skilfully, without hamming up the bad-guy role, getting the tone of his character’s contemptible racist hypocrisy, just right.

Nick Chambers and Vicki Campbell are respectively Nick, the novel’s narrator and Jordan, Daisy’s long time friend. The role of Nick is particularly challenging, effectively being the lens through which these unhappy vignettes are played out. Chambers though does a good job, adding just enough colour to the part to earn his character some modest sympathy. Campbell is a talented actress who fleshes out her supporting role with a harsh perspective on reality.

The use of the auditorium is clever with action spilling into both gallery and stalls, although a pivotal moment of the storyline, in which an imprisoned Myrtle Wilson spies Tom driving Gatsby's car, is blurred over in the dramatic action of this piece. As is often the case with seeing The Great Gatsby on stage, a familiarity with the story whilst not essential, is encouraged.

Peter Joucla’s direction impresses and the Charleston era is reinforced by Zahra Mansouri’s intelligent costume design that elegantly depict flappers and mobsters whilst avoiding overstatement. This site-specific production is well crafted with a pre-show that kicks off an hour before curtain up in Wilton’s speakeasy bar skilfully setting both time and mood. With period dress encouraged to be worn by the audience, an early arrival is recommended for a show that is yet another example of London’s off-West End excellence.


Runs to 23 March 2013

The Great Gatsby Musical - Review

King's Head Theatre, London

****
Music by Joe Evans

Lyrics by Joe Evans and F. Scott Fitzgerald

Book by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Directed by Linnie Reedman

Matilda Sturridge as Daisy Buchanan

The Great Gatsby Musical is an enjoyable  piece of theatre. Linnie Reedman presents F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American tale of interwar decadence in a delightful flurry of frocks, charlestons, and mint juleps.  Be warned though, this show fillets the tale to its barest bones and for the audience to keep up with the show's pace, particularly in Act 2, a pre-knowledge of the original story is advised.

Whilst the production as a whole is pleasing on the eye, as a musical it is a work in progress. Joe Evans, is being grandiose when he refers to lyrics having been written by both himself and Fitzgerald. The story’s author wrote exquisite prose so I suspect he is spinning in his grave at the chorus of Evans’ composition You Cannot Live Forever simply being those four words repeated incessantly. The musical is set in the Jazz Age, but the melodies as they stand are shallow, with insufficient acknowledgment of say the wonderful Gershwin-esque sounds of the time, which would have enhanced the show’s sound. It is also a disappointment that the arrangements have not found room for any brass, as an occasional muted trumpet could have evoked both time and place. Evans also denies large swathes of Act 2 any song or music whatsoever, notably the New York hotel room denouement. If this show is to succeed as a musical it needs bigger numbers to portray the maelstrom of emotion and revelation that Fitzgerald created. As it stands, this production is more of a play with songs and music, rather than a musical.

The show’s strengths are undoubtedly within its casting. As Gatsby, Sean Browne evokes the coolness and sham-mystique of the protagonist, skilfully. Gatsby was an Allen Stanford of his day, with a fortune built on shaky and immoral foundations. Browne nailed the nervous under-statement that evolves into defiance, superbly.

Opposite Browne, Matilda Sturridge is an exquisitely delicate Daisy Buchanan, in love with Gatsby whilst trapped in a loveless marriage to Tom. It is remarkable to learn that this marks Sturridge’s professional stage debut as her almost innate ability to portray the subtlest of Daisy’s nuances with simply a glance or a tilt of her head are masterful and belie her youth. Her father Charles directed the television epic Brideshead Revisited some 30 odd years ago, in which her mother Phoebe Nicholls featured, portraying the same decadent years albeit from this side of the Atlantic. One cannot help but feel that the young Sturridge has been well counselled to play such a classic character from that era.

Also worthy of mention are Peta Cornish who plays flapper Jordan Baker delightfully and Jon Gabriel Robbins, whose portrayal of the cuckolded George Wilson is a clever study in stifled rage, frustration and humiliation. Steven Clarke too, as the philandering Tom is convincing as an uncaring, racist, old money WASP.   Raphael Verrion delivers rather a journeyman performance as Nick Carroway. Fitzgerald wrote the book through Nick’s eyes as a narrator, making him critical to the unfolding of the story. That narrative aspect has been largely removed from this production and thus negates Nick’s impact as a character.

Christopher Hone’s economic design cleverly shifts from pool to garage to mansion, and Belle Mundi’s detailed period costumes are a delight. The girls are elegantly dressed and headbanded almost throughout, though one felt at times for Gatsby, sporting a double breasted suit within the scorching heat of the small theatre.

If you have an affinity for the story, then this is a show to see, if only to observe how the Ruby In The Dust company have added some music and song to a well known fable and given it their own unique and stylish interpretation.

Runs to 1st September 2012