The Curious Case of Benjamin Button West End review – the musical is ageing beautifully

Sondheim stated that musicals aren’t written but rewritten, and watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s evolution from a tiny but profound gem in Southwark Playhouse’s smallest space to a fully-fledged West End show has been an extraordinary pleasure. I reckon the great Stephen would’ve approved of Jethro Compton and Darren Clark’s distillation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s tall tale about a man born old who ages backward to infancy, with its intelligent storytelling through song, piercing wit, and an electrifying emotional charge that seldom lapses into sentimentality. Already one of the best British musicals in decades, in this newest iteration, it looks like a world-beater.

This isn’t a straightforward adaptation; it uses the fantastical premise of the original short story (which also inspired the 2008 Brad Pitt film) as the jumping-off point for a complex but never confusing yarn about such universal themes as the passage of time, the nature of belonging, the meaning of home, and the redemptive power of love. Compton transposes the tale to his native Cornwall, adjusting the time frame from early-20th century to the late 1980s so that John Dagleish’s Benjamin Button lives through world wars and watches the first moon landing through ever less cloudy eyes.

The moon, and its pull upon the sea, is a repeated motif in the text and in the gorgeously ramshackle set, simultaneously abstract and literal, of fishing nets, staircases, trapdoors, hanging orbs, twinkling lights and good honest wood, created by Compton with Anna Kelsey (who also designed the earthily attractive costumes). Zoe Spurr’s lighting bathes it all in a poetic golden glow that often makes the cast look like figures in a painting. The sense of it being a beautiful dream that sometimes morphs into an unsettling nightmare is enhanced by Luke Swaffield’s evocative, reverb-heavy sound design. The proscenium arch lends a new laser-sharp focus, while the choice of the intimate Ambassadors Theatre preserves the sense of spontaneity and collusion between cast and audience.

The Cornish setting has inspired songwriter Clark to produce a shimmering, soaring score, Celtic-flavoured with a pop sensibility, that shifts from delicate to thunderous as it encompasses folk ballads of aching longing, fishermen’s shanties, rollicking drinking songs, and rousing chorales that thrill the blood. There’s even an anthem sung in Kernewek, the ancient Cornish language. Clark and Mark Aspinall’s arrangements employ a combination of percussion, drums, strings, brass and guitars, creating a sense of melancholic exhilaration reminiscent of Come From Away and Once. As played by a team of a dozen charismatic, stunningly versatile actor-musicians, the music has percussive punch tempered with a haunting lyricism, as it surges through the theatre like a tsunami of feeling.

Most of this glorious company were in last summer’s Southwark run and two of them (Philippa Hogg and Matthew Burns, both wonderful) were in the 2019 version when the show featured just five players. Jack Quarton’s portrayal of the timid youngster Benjamin befriends only to freak out when they are reunited decades later was already good last year but has further developed into a finely wrought study. Benedict Salter makes something individual and deeply affecting out of Benjamin’s father’s grief and disbelief.

The two leads are new but are the equals of – if not, even better than – their predecessors. Dagleish, all sad eyes with a gentle but powerful presence, unforgettably combines astonishing vulnerability with imposing physicality. Jamie Parker was starrier, more authoritative in the role, but Dagleish nails the eternal misfit, condemned to isolation because somebody once told him that was his fate. He sings magnificently, producing ringing high tenor notes in a new act two cri de cœur solo that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and the relationship with Clare Foster’s luminous Elowen (“the only woman he ever loved”) is beautifully realised.

Foster is heartbreakingly good, conveying a life-affirming generosity of spirit as she moves from the restlessness of assertive youth to the infirmity of old age. The scenes where Benjamin and Elowen are parted then reunited have acquired new urgency and emotional authenticity, and Foster brings an intensity to her second act solo “Time” (“a person can be old and yet be young…for a life is but the sum of all its parts, a memory of moments in our hearts…there’s still time”) that pins you to the back of your seat. It’s testament to the quality of the writing that different interpretations of the characters all work superbly, and the final image of Benjamin as a baby able to remember his tumultuous life only as a series of dreams remains devastatingly moving.

Operation Mincemeat similarly started out small and was a critics’ and audience’s favourite at Southwark Playhouse before heading into town. That ‘little show that could’ is now headed for Broadway and I wouldn’t be surprised if Benjamin Button follows a similar trajectory. Timeless and heart-burstingly magical, there’s no other current West End musical I’d rather be at.