(seen at the afternoon preview performance on 22nd October 2024)
One of the most important pieces of advice aspiring musical theatre creators are given is always to “show, not tell.” If you cannot advance the action by visual means, while the lyric and song carry inner dialogues or enhance the drama, you have a problem.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a startling exception which proves the rule.
As with the film (the monkey hasn’t read the F Scott Fitzgerald short story), the spine is time. “The Strangers” (the ensemble) constantly remind us in days, weeks, months and years of the reverse progress of Button’s life. Sometimes informative, sometimes – frankly – downright irritating, but necessary to keep track of this indeed curious tale.
It is charmingly done. Jethro Compton’s wooden Cornish maritime-feel set is warm and edgy by turn, Zoe Spurr lighting it for daytime, tavern, bedroom and even beneath the sea as required – finding the intense light of the coast or sadness of the deathbed with ease.
Add Luke Swaffield’s sound design able to pick out and not over-amplify each musical instrument and blend other effects, and half the staging work is already done.
Anna Kelsey’s costume designs, Chi-san Howard’s choreography and Jethro Compton’s direction of his own work do the rest. The simple removal of an apron is sufficient to move us deeply at times, the sway of the ensemble against time as all play their own musical instruments creates memorable 'still photograph' moments in a cinematically flowing production.
John Dagleish is quite extraordinary as Benjamin Button. A cross between Yoda and Paul McCartney, his physical transformation as he de-ages is almost as remarkable as his versatility as actor and singer.
Clare Foster matches him as lover and wife Elowen. From blowsy barmaid to tender seductress and on to bereaved mother her character never slows.
There is lovely work too from Jonathan Charles and Jack Quarton as father and son Trenlee, boat crew and benefactors in Benjamin’s journey. Quarton’s final scene in the role is particularly moving as we are made acutely aware of temporal discord.
Also playing with time, Anna Fordham does a wonderful job as Keynvor, Locryn and Mrs Bennett, characters changing with only a hat.
Benedict Salter as Button Senior is another key player, establishing the scene quickly at the beginning and reaching a moving conclusion.
The entire ensemble are exceptional musicians and commentators on the action. Moving as one or quietly assisting the show individually, their presence alone adds to the intimacy and optimism on which the piece rests.
Truthfully, the monkey did find the score in the end a little lacking in variety. Still, the soft lilt matched the warmth of the show’s heart. If the constant numerical count sometimes felt like pinpricks in its balloon, through which some warmth drains out - the work stays afloat, drifting above an always rolling temporal sea.
Due to the inevitability of the ending too, our emotional shields are raised rather early in the second act. This makes it harder for the show to deliver a final memorable blow. It is a structural issue with a solution either unavailable to the creative team or simply a vital one they fail to find.
Despite that, we are for the most part bathed in a life from which we all emerge a little wiser. The time and tide of our own become as one with the waters of Cornwall, reminding us that everything must change, and the years wait for nobody.
