★★★★

“Barber gives the character everything she has”

Jonathan Harvey and the Pet Shop Boys’ salacious, scandalous and searingly funny “Musik” is only an hour long, but it will take stage management twice as long each night to clear up all the celebrity names dropped. It’s a good thing, too, that we’re fully aware that this is a work of complete fiction (although we would love it to be all true) otherwise the libel lawyers would outnumber the paying audience. Mind you, my guess is that they’d be won over pretty rapidly by Frances Barber’s brilliant and hilarious delivery of Harvey’s script, that charts the outrageous life of a certain Billie Trix.

So, who is this Billie Trix? She was first introduced to the world in the 2001 musical, ‘Closer to Heaven’ as a retired rock icon and actress. Although the narrator, she had a relatively small part of the story. In 2019, Harvey and the Pet Shop Boys created “Musik”, the spin-off cabaret show that propelled Trix to centre stage, exploring her back story from her ignominious birth in war-torn Berlin to the present day. Not quite a ‘cradle-to-grave’ story, as she still manages to keep the latter at bay, against all the odds. Six songs pepper the narrative, opening with ‘Mongrel’. “Times were tough, but I was tougher…” she croons in her ravaged voice, “times were rough, but I was rougher”. Yet by the final song she is undeniably celebratory, belting out the fact that you’ve got to live your life for every moment (she certainly has). “We never know what’s round the corner” she says by way of introduction, “and that’s what gives me hope”.

And what corners she has turned, managing to find herself at the forefront of each revolution in pop culture; giving birth to the American folk revival, inventing ‘Disco’, inspiring Andy Warhol’s pop art culture, creating Madonna’s image and – in an update since its 2019 premier – unwittingly causing the global pandemic. She witnessed Vietnam, rejected the hand of a young Trump (good move), and got up to all graphically described shenanigans with the likes of Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin, Mick (and Bianca) Jagger, Frank Zappa, Shania Twain, Jean-Paul Sartre, even the Dalai Lama… I could go on. Trix is clearly delusional, and her memoir is fantastical. She is larger than life, arrogant, self-assured and psychotically callous and indifferent to opinion. But she is adorable, charismatic, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Barber gives the character everything she has, bringing her to life and making her preposterous anecdotes totally believable… almost. With expert comic timing, Barber mixes over-the-top self-aggrandisement with dead-pan self-deprecation, conquering the stage and the audience with a performance Billie Trix could only dream of.

Terry Johnson directs the show with the pulsating pace of a Pet Shop Boys dance anthem. Barber talks and moves at 120bpm, seamlessly segueing into the musical numbers. The unmistakable Tennant and Lowe synth-pop backing does give a vague karaoke feel to the songs, but Barber’s crackling vocals adds the required depth, aided by Harvey’s and the duo’s scathingly clever lyrics. The songs are not necessarily what we’ll be taking home with us – it is Harvey’s razor-sharp writing, coupled with Barber’s fiercely formidable performance that will be truly remembered. Billie Trix insists that she is a ‘gift to the world’. A dubious claim. But there’s no doubting that Frances Barber is a gift to the theatre world. Her character is indomitable, her show unmissable.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON at the Ambassadors Theatre

★★★★★

“every member of the ensemble cast is a vital cog in the intricate mechanism of this fine piece of theatre”

Five years ago, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” unveiled itself to little fanfare at Southwark Playhouse. Jethro Compton’s and Darren Clarke’s adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s fantastical short story used just five actor-musicians to tell the tale in a chamber music fashion. I described it at the time as ‘a sensational piece of musical theatre’. I was not alone. Acoustic and intimate, the only way for it to go was to grow, until last year it replayed at the larger ‘Elephant’ at Southwark, with more cast, more instruments and much more of a marketing push behind it. I felt it had lost something of the original. Nevertheless, it’s course was pre-determined. As per one of its narrative leitmotifs: ‘Time and tide waits for no man’. It’s West End premiere, bigger and better still, has remarkably, and unquestionably, recaptured the sheer magic and emotional charm of its humble beginnings.

Fitzgerald was inspired to write the story, in 1922, 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, in an attempt to turn this idea on its head, 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, and eventually, as his mind begins to devolve again, returns to the care of his nurses, and eventual oblivion. It is a fantasy. A dark fairy tale but one that is slightly clinical and lacking in pathos. The genius of this musical adaptation partly lies in how much it is transformed into a heart-wrenching love story. Liberties are taken with the original text, but entirely necessary ones.

We are no longer in the US seaport of Baltimore, but on the Cornish coast. Compton – not content with writing, directing and co-writing the lyrics, is also the creative force behind the set. Evocatively shambolic, it recreates the small fishing village. You can almost smell the salty sea air. With the crash of a wave, we are introduced to the characters that inhabit this backwater with a poetic lyricism that echoes Dylan Thomas; and a musical accompaniment that pulls us right into the heart of the story, stronger than the moon at the highest tide. The folksy, Celtic tunes have a musical theatre veneer but are delivered with sublime energy and virtuosity by the twelve strong cast, layered with Chi-San Howard’s expert and clockwork choreography. Swapping instruments like relay batons, they keep the score alive, guiding it through the haunting ballads right up to the soaring anthems. The thirteenth cast member, who never picks up an instrument (until the encore) stands apart. The oddball. The title character – Benjamin Button. John Dagleish gives us a hangdog and tender portrayal that is also defiant and powerful. We are not long into the show when our hearts are already breaking. Rejected by his mother (beautifully and tragically portrayed by Philippa Hogg) there are shades of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ as Button is kept in the attic – a shameful secret. Hogg’s rendition of ‘The Kraken’s Lullaby’ leaves a lasting, tearful impression as she echoes the line ‘I pray you won’t wake from your sleep’.

Yet he continues to do so, for the next sixty-nine years. It is a miraculous backwards journey that extends beyond the curiosity of a life running in reverse. Time is a constant refrain, and woven into the fabric of time are the inextricable links, and twists of fate, that snowball into life-changing moments. He meets the important characters in his life twice. Notably ‘Little Jack’ (brilliantly played by Jack Quarton), a young fisherman whom Button befriends but later horrifies when he is young, and Jack is older. But it is Clare Foster’s Elowen who lights up the stage. The love of his life. Sassy and flirtatious in youth, heartbroken yet forgiving in love and vulnerably stoic in her tragic later years, her journey as she and Button travel in opposite directions is a masterstroke. When she sings ‘We have Time’, we can hear the crack of a thousand hearts throughout the auditorium.

Mark Aspinall’s musical direction and orchestration accentuate the dynamics, each crescendo and diminuendo highlighted by Luke Swaffield’s crisp sound design. While Zoe Spurr’s lighting guides us from night, back into day; from the moon to the sun and even into the depths of the sea. Each shade pinpointing each pivotal moment.

Just as every moment counts, every member of the ensemble cast is a vital cog in the intricate mechanism of this fine piece of theatre. The harmonies sweep us away leaving us slightly breathless. Yet the emotional punch doesn’t completely conceal the cleverness of Compton and Clarke’s interpretation. Relocating it to Cornwall is an inspired choice, as is shifting the narrative forward to take in most of the twentieth century. The shifting tides and man’s fascination with the moon play an important role, taking on a metaphorical and literal reality with the 1969 Moon landing. An event that confirms the protagonists’ belief that anything is possible. We get the sense that they don’t quite fully accept that optimism. And most of the time, neither do we. But the battered belief abides. And this show affirms it. From start to finish, it is a triumph. Or is that from finish to start?

Tag Archives: Luke Swaffield

MUSIK

★★★★

Wilton’s Music Hall

MUSIK

Wilton’s Music Hall

★★★★

“Barber gives the character everything she has”

MUSIK

Wilton’s Music Hall

Reviewed on 17th October 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Charlie Flint

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE REMARKABLE BEN HART | ★★★★★ | September 2025

MACBETH | ★★★★ | July 2025

ROMEO AND JULIET | ★★★ | June 2025

MARY AND THE HYENAS | ★★★ | March 2025

THE MAGIC FLUTE | ★★★★ | February 2025

POTTED PANTO | ★★★★★ | December 2024

MUSIK

MUSIK

MUSIK

🎭 A TOP SHOW IN NOVEMBER 2024 🎭

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

★★★★★

Ambassadors Theatre

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON at the Ambassadors Theatre

★★★★★

“every member of the ensemble cast is a vital cog in the intricate mechanism of this fine piece of theatre”