A labour of love that has worked its way slowly to the West End over the five years since it debuted at Southwark Playhouse, at its best Jethro Compton’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an extraordinary thing, a soaring folk opera that overwhelms you with a cascade of song and feeling.
It is based on F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story, and shares a premise: Benjamin Button (John Dagliesh) is a man inexplicably born at the age of 70, who then begins to age backwards, leading to a strange, exhilarating, sometimes extremely sad sort of life.
Writer/director/designer Compton’s interpretation is very different to both Fitzgerald’s and the 2008 David Fincher film starring Brad Pitt. For starters it’s not set in nineteenth century America, but is virtually a love letter to Compton’s native Cornwall, its story spanning much of the twentieth century.
Fitzgerald’s plot is loosely followed, but heavily tinkered with – one of the more significant changes is having Dagliesh’s Benjamin born with a full adult’s mind and vocabulary rather than beginning life as a baby in an old man’s body.
More to the point, it has a joy, romance and big-hearted elan that stands in stark contrast to Fitzgerald’s cynicism and the dolefulness of Fincher’s sloggy film. Indeed, despite tragic notes from the off – Benjamin’s mum takes her own life early on – the tone is largely whimsical and upbeat, focussing on the eccentric minutiae of Cornish village life, from oddball shopkeepers to dozy sheep.
Gradually a story takes shape, as Benjamin begins to chafe at his father keeping him at home all the time, and starts sneaking off to the local pub where he meets free spirit barmaid Elowen (Clare Foster). As the years go by, the two are drawn to each other – handily she has a thing for older men – but elaborate twists of circumstance keep them apart for years, until they’re thrown together by the Second World War, at which point they’re almost the same age.
The fiery Foster and affable Dagleish make for a nice central couple – she’s full of carpe diem energy and he’s detached and passive, bemused at his own life; I think that works.
There are points, especially early on, where it feels like Benjamin Button is dragging its feet somewhat – certainly several of the songs feel like they’re padding out plot points unnecessarily. But it does really find a gear as actual world events overtake Benjamin.
And even when it feels like it’s slightly struggling to get to the point, it’s unfailingly stirring. The company – doubled in size since the original Southwark run – all sing and play musical instruments and the walls of sea shanty-inflected choral song are a truly beautiful thing, surging and crashing like waves off the Cornish coast. This is as much the show’s USP as the reverse ageing story. Although unquestionably Compton’s project through and through, he wouldn’t have been able to realise it nearly as well without Darren Clake’s music.
It’s very good, but the last ten minutes or so are actively sublime, as the final years of Benjamin’s mad existence unspool with an elegiac poetry that had me teetering dangerously close to tears.
A splashy Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is coming to the West End next year – clearly it’s a big deal, but I can’t imagine it’ll top this take on his lesser known story for charm, heart or just plain magic.
