★★★★★

“a thoroughly fascinating, moving and evocative piece of theatre”

Written in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is just one of many short stories that comprise his “Tales of the Jazz Age” collection; though undoubtedly one of the better-known. Fitzgerald was inspired by Mark Twain who lamented the fact that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. Fitzgerald tried to turn this idea on its head, but instead discovered that youth and old age are mirrors of each other. A witty and insightful satire it tells the story of Benjamin Button who is born an old man and mysteriously begins ageing backwards. At the beginning of his life he is withered and worn, but as he continues to grow younger he embraces life, falls in love, goes to war, has children, goes to school and eventually, as his mind begins to devolve again, returns to the care of his nurses.

A difficult tale to categorise, but at its heart it is a fantasy. A fairy-tale. A love story underpinned by a mysterious curse. Writer Jethro Compton with composer Darren Clark have embraced that heart and transplanted it into a Cornish folk tale to produce a thoroughly fascinating, moving and evocative piece of theatre. The story is told in a time-honoured fashion by the five characters, washed up on the rugged Cornish coast. And the music emerges naturally from the ebb and flow of the narrative as though one cannot exist without the other. This extends to the five cast – all master story tellers and multi-instrumentalists – who perform, move, act and sing together as one. You can hear it in their harmonies which are breathtakingly beautiful.

Whatever liberties have been taken with Fitzgerald’s story, in my mind, only improve on the original. Spanning most of the twentieth century, the epic structure fits perfectly into the small-town Cornish setting. This is ‘Under Milk Wood’ meets ‘Sliding Doors’ as we are shown how the smallest chain of events can change a life irrevocably – for better or for worse. The show is a conjuring trick where seventy years are crammed into two hours and over forty characters into the five actors onstage. With Chi-San Howard’s choreography it is a master class in dexterity.

When not behind the piano, guitar, accordion, drum kit, Matthew Burns and Joey Hickman have the lion’s share of the roles. Meanwhile, James Marlowe completely nails the unenviable task of portraying Benjamin Button reversing from sixty to twenty with an outstanding performance (the very old and the very young Benjamin are puppets forged from the flotsam and jetsam of the Cornish beach). Like a broken clock that tells the right time twice a day, he finds true love twice in his life. With the same person: Philippa Hogg and Rosalind Ford play respectively (among a myriad other characters of course) the young Elowen, whom he marries and the older Elowen with whom he is reunited; and it is these two who steal the show and provide the most haunting and beautiful moments. And with Ford’s cello, Hogg’s violin and their combined voices, I defy anyone to remain dry eyed throughout the evening.

This is quite a sensational piece of musical theatre that takes a curious tale and adds its very own eccentricities. The only minor quibble is that it is just a bit too long, but that said, the magic sustains from start to finish. Or from finish to start, whichever way you want to look at it.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography courtesy Jethro Compton Productions

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Watermill Theatre

Reviewed – 14th May 2018

★★★★

“Artistic Director Paul Hart and his youthful players have magnificently overcome the twin risks of over-familiarity and complacency in this joyful new production”

Buried deep in the English countryside is a little theatre that consistently beguiles. The 200-seat Watermill just outside Newbury stages its own plays twelve times each year. Casts live together throughout every production and shows are marked by both excellent ensemble work and by high levels of creativity and innovation.

But how to shine new light on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows’. And so do we all, for the play is a favourite of almost every outdoor theatre season, consistently ranking in the top three of all the Bard’s thirty seven plays. We love to laugh again (and again) at the play within a play, with its hackneyed ‘rude mechanicals’, two fingers held up to make another chink in the wall.

Watermill Artistic Director Paul Hart and his youthful players have magnificently overcome the twin risks of over-familiarity and complacency in this joyful new production. Appropriately enough for a play about make-believe, the show opens with a shadowy view of theatre fly ropes, part of a stage design by Kate Lias. Rope tricks of various kinds help make the magic in this celebratory show which also has a strong commitment to diversity.

Sign language is an integral part of the production, since the cast includes a co-founder of the Deaf & Hearing Theatre Company in a speaking role. Sophie Stone’s partially signed scenes with Evening Standard award winning Tyrone Huntley are delightful, the signing very much enhancing the show. As well as being a witty and persuasive actor, Tyrone Huntley has a fine singing voice. Singing and signing also combine in a moving ensemble number after the interval.

There’s more magic in the mix when shadow play begins behind a spangly red curtain that descends rapidly to transform the enchanted wood into a nightclub. It’s a good setting for some witty musical interpolations. Is this the first Midsummer Night’s Dream to feature Rodgers and Hart’s ‘Blue Moon’? In other scenes the always engaging Eva Feiler as Puck cleverly works dolls to underline the point that we are witnessing a dream time, engineered by otherworldly creatures for their own amusement.

Victoria Blunt was brilliant as Bottom, switching from broad Lancashire to a booming Gielgud parody as the most thespish of the ‘rude mechanicals’ who finally get to perform their play within a play right at the end of the show.

As Oberon, ‘King of Shadows’ Jamie Satterthwaite seemed at first a little too insubstantial for the patriarchal world of Athens where a father let alone a king of the fairies ‘should be as a god’ but he gained authority as the evening went on.
Some careful cuts and rearrangements are characteristic of the close reading that’s evidently gone into a show that quite bursts with ideas. The night this reviewer saw it, Emma McDonald’s role as Titania was magnificently covered at very short notice by Rebecca Lee. She appeared to be all but word-perfect, with a vampish authority that was most engaging. Her substitution may have understandably explained a slightly hectic breathlessness that characterised more than one scene in the performance I saw.

The show ends in a magnificently farcical version of ‘Pyramus & Thisbe’, the play within. Talented Offue Okegbe doubles Snout and Theseus, as well as playing an instrument, like many other cast members. His ‘wall’ is much too funny a surprise to spoil in this review. Joey Hickman was an owlish Demetrius as well as the show’s musical director.

But for a bizarrely unexpected flash of light across the crowd, Tom White’s lighting design was highly effective, particularly so in the final scene ‘If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear.’

On press night, a good part of the audience came whooping to its feet at the end of this big-hearted and dazzling show. Cast and a large supporting crew, including magic, movement and BSL advisers, all deserve huge congratulation for their contributions to such a delightful Dream.

Southwark Playhouse

Reviewed – 17th May 2019

★★★★★

“a thoroughly fascinating, moving and evocative piece of theatre”

This is quite a sensational piece of musical theatre that takes a curious tale and adds its very own eccentricities. The only minor quibble is that it is just a bit too long, but that said, the magic sustains from start to finish. Or from finish to start, whichever way you want to look at it.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography courtesy Jethro Compton Productions

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Southwark Playhouse until 8th June

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Watermill Theatre

Reviewed – 14th May 2018

★★★★

“Artistic Director Paul Hart and his youthful players have magnificently overcome the twin risks of over-familiarity and complacency in this joyful new production”

Victoria Blunt was brilliant as Bottom, switching from broad Lancashire to a booming Gielgud parody as the most thespish of the ‘rude mechanicals’ who finally get to perform their play within a play right at the end of the show.

But for a bizarrely unexpected flash of light across the crowd, Tom White’s lighting design was highly effective, particularly so in the final scene ‘If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear.’

On press night, a good part of the audience came whooping to its feet at the end of this big-hearted and dazzling show. Cast and a large supporting crew, including magic, movement and BSL advisers, all deserve huge congratulation for their contributions to such a delightful Dream.

Reviewed by David Woodward

Photography by Scott Rylander

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Watermill Theatre until 16th June

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Previously reviewed at this venue