F Scott Fitzgerald’s tale of a man who ages in reverse suggests that time is what you make of it. And the five years it has taken Jethro Compton and Darren Clark’s folk musical to reach the West End since its debut have clearly been well spent.
Compton’s idea to transport the jazz age writer’s short story to a Cornish fishing village works well for a plot that is part fable, part old wives’ tale. With a 13-strong troupe of actor-musicians inhabiting various characters – the gnome-fancier, the gin-swigging tea lady, the smiling couple who secretly wish for a divorce – the opening vignettes unfurl like something from Under Milk Wood. Into this melee is born the elderly Benjamin, complete with a bowler hat and a “Mind if I smoke?”.
John Dagleish has stepped into the role that Jamie Parker played in last year’s Southwark Playhouse run, and gives a moving performance combining the physicality of an old man with the expressions of an abandoned child. Button is told he is a monster – his mother (Philippa Hogg) sings a searingly dark lullaby to her “Kraken” – and the shame stays with him long after he meets Elowen, the love of his life.
The musical energy that accompanies Button’s backwards biography shivers the timbers of the barnacle-encrusted set. Clare Foster’s Elowen is sassy, self-assured and stunningly voiced, and the ensemble’s close harmonies and string-instrument shenanigans have us pitching and rolling between comic capers and the underlying sadness of Button’s condition.
The production’s full-bore approach to emotion is reminiscent of Come from Away; there are times when it substitutes pure sentiment for satisfying narrative structure, particularly in the second act as Button faces the unavoidably human experiences of loss and grief. Sometimes the fiddle tunes begin to blend into each other, too, although A Little Life may stick in your head like a mackerel in a net.
Perhaps the winsomeness is occasionally overdone. But it’s impossible to be grudging about a production this warm, touching and vivacious, and Compton, who also directs, deserves to be feted as a worthy Son of St Piran.
