The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Review

Ambassadors Theatre, London

*****

Music & lyrics by Darren Clark

Book, lyrics & directed by Jethro Compton

Clare Foster and John Dagleish

“It’s all just a matter of time…” a recurring lyric throughout this musical iteration of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic short story – and over the last few years it has been a slow but enchanting journey, watching this show evolve through two iterations at the Southwark Playhouse into its West End premiere at the Ambassadors Theatre.

The story of Benjamin Button is a modern classic. Born in the early 20th century, by a freak of the fates as a 70 year-old man, Button goes through his life gradually becoming younger until he finally expires as an infant in swaddling. Stripping away all the Oscar winning digital/CGI enhancements incorporated in the 2008 movie, writers Jethro Compton and Darren Clark shift the fable from its New Orleans origins to their native Cornwall, and in so doing create a show that gloriously celebrates story-telling through its inspirational cast.

John Dagleish plays Button and in a simple depiction of his age, arrives in the show as a hunched, bespectacled, bowler-hatted and pipe-smoking curmudgeon. Its an ingenious touch that celebrates Button’s age, yet allows him to evolve through the show with simple  costume and make-up adjustments. Dagleish has a fine voice and through an outstanding performance also captures the quizzical yet paradoxically wise, innocence of Button through the show’s first act. The second half brings moments of heartbreaking poignancy as Button's freakishly evolving youthfulness sees him encounter rejection and disbelief from some of those around him.

The show’s company of actor-musicians lend a rustic-folksy authenticity to the evening that imbues it with a mystical Cornish air. Designed by Compton with Anna Kelsey the stage is rough-timbers and staircases with fishing nets draped across the ceiling – subtle and understated, yet a beautiful evocation of this story’s roots.

Opposite Benjamin is his love interest, Elowen, played by the magnificent Clare Foster. Elowen’s character ages in the natural way through the show and it is a mark of Foster’s genius that she embodies the woman not only as a coquettish teenager, but also, sensitively, through the loving and passionate years of her middle-age, through to her ultimate passing, all with a tenderness and an authenticity that mark hers as one of the more fabulous female performances in musical theatre to have graced a London stage in quite some time. 

Leave your memories of the movie at the door. Clark and Compton’s interpretation of this whimsical story, together with their inspirational melodies, mark this show as perhaps the finest new writing to hit the West End this year. If the media gods allow, this production almost deserves a movie of its own. Who knows? Surely it’s all just a matter of time….

Booking until 15th February 2025

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

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 Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Park Theatre, London

*****

Written and directed by Jethro Compton
Based on the short story by Dorothy M. Johnson

Paul Albertson

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was a classic Western, released in 1962, immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece for both its director John Ford and its legendary stars John Wayne and Henry Fonda and since then recognised by the US Library of Congress as being a film of Cultural Significance. The tale revolved around the expansion of the (to be) US territories as the pioneers headed west, encompassing the lawlessness and elementary justice of the time. It also interweaved a well crafted love story and aspects of political compromise, against a backdrop of tumbleweed, saloon bars and much whiskey. Like the fine distillation of a spirit, the ridiculously talented and at 25 young, Jethro Compton (who also directs) has taken the movie’s plot, retaining most key milestones and adding a couple of new ones. The end result is a play that condenses a cinema-scoped canvas into a compelling drama that is set entirely within a saloon bar. It’s an astounding script, tightly written, that provides a thrilling, moving and entirely credible glimpse of quite how Wild the West (and how horrifically racist the South) was.

In the town of Two Trees, where “the sun is hot but the salsa is hotter” a bruised Ransome Forest is brought in badly beaten, having been rescued by rancher Bert Barricune. Hallie Jackson, assisted by her black servant boy Jim Mosten runs the saloon and tends to Forest’s wounds. It emerges that Forest is an educated man from the North East and we see him put down roots in Two Trees, where he teaches the illiterate Jackson and Mosten. The play follows the subtly complex love that develops between the landlady and her Eastern tutor as Barricune’s jealousy smoulders.

There’s a telling line in the play: “bring in education, there follows legislation”. Many folk in the South could not abide the concept of educated black people and Forest’s education of Mosten soon attracts the attention of the racist gang-leader Liberty Valance. To say more would be to spoil, but it is to Compton’s credit that he manages the suspense as well as the morality and love interest with mature aplomb. His writing is at all times exciting, masterful and often gripping.

The performances are faultless throughout. Oliver Lansley is Foster and he nails the portrayal of a caring liberal, committed to a cause yet useless with a gun. Late in the tale, Lansley’s character is elected Governor and Lansley subtly picks out the oleaginous nature shared by all in political office. Paul Albertson’s Barricune could almost suggest the work of a man who has been playing cowboys all his life. His gun-slinging yet complex character is a masterful portrayal that is as weathered and leathered as the coat he wears. (With a nod to fabulous costume work from Jessica Knight). Bringing up the leads, Niamh Walsh is Jackson with another performance of finely observed perfection, convincing as a young woman wise beyond her years. 

Outstanding in support, Lanre Malaolu is Mosten. Capturing the honest enthusiasm of his character and later his blind terror as he recognises the inevitability of his fate, it’s a performance that mixes humour with tragedy and Malalou is unquestionably a young actor who is one to watch. James Marlowe is the bad guy Liberty Valance. Understated chilling menace permeate his scenes, with a combination of vocal work, poise and timing (all skills shared by the rest of the company, to be fair) that create a frighteningly recognisable image of the racist ugliness of America’s South. Sarah Booth’s elegantly detailed saloon bar set, complete with an upstairs landing and swing doors that are gloriously authentic and without a hint of kitsch, stylishly completes the suspension of our disbelief.

Currently this show ranks as my best of 2014. Tightly written and with electrifying performances (that include the coolest of pre-recorded narrations from screen legend Robert Vaughn) it is a work of first-class stagecraft that provides a well observed history lesson into not only how the West was won, but in how the USA was formed. Not to be missed and deserving of a transfer.

Runs to 22nd June 2014