The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Original West End Cast Recording

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

In recent times London has been awash – and the West End positively up to its armpits – in jukebox musicals and musicals based on existing stories or intellectual property. You don’t need many fingers to count the MT offerings with any originality… latest offerings being The Mad Ones, Shucked, Brigadoon, Starlight Express… erm, The Book of Mormon? But is this necessarily a bad thing?

In a word, no. I loved Back to the Future (based on a movie), Operation Mincemeat (based on a true story) and Girl From the North Country (based on Bob Dylan’s back catalogue). And if giving a risk-averse audience comfort by presenting a known entity means that we fill our theatres, then this is surely better than a West End of dark houses, no? Heck, even our dearly departed God, Stephen Sondheim, had a remake playing at the National not that long ago.

Before you strip me of my MT pinbadge and lob me off the nearest building like Bobby Strong in Urinetown (now, there’s an original musical!), let me propose that we ask not ‘are there too many unoriginal musicals in the West End?’ but ‘are these unoriginal West End musicals any good?’

In a good many cases, the answer to this is a resounding yes. A prime case in point is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Jethro Compton and Darren Clark’s overhaul of the F Scott Fitzgerald short story about the man who ages backwards. It’s more accurate to say that the musical is inspired by the idea of a character aging in reverse, rather than a faithful retelling of the original. By changing timelines and relocating the story to a fishing village on the rugged Cornish coast, Compton and Clark have created a timeless piece of folklore that breathes full-blooded vitality and colour into Fitzgerald’s comparatively cold and lifeless silhouette.

John Dagleish playing the title role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Picture Juan Coolio

Developed over the past few years on the Fringe, Button has not just playing in the West End, at the Ambassadors, but – thanks to its winning combination of ensemble-driven storytelling and inventive stagecraft – is the proud owner of three Olivier Awards, for Best New Musical, Best Actor in a Musical (John Dagleish as Button) and Outstanding Musical Contribution (Clark and MD/supervisor Mark Aspinall).

After Button closes this weekend, the show will continue to weave itself into the cultural fabric with the release of its Original West End Cast Recording – a luminous 80 minutes that perfectly captures the folksy, natural actor-muso charm of the stage show.

Technically, the recording is faultless – and not over-produced, thankfully – and re-creates the musical’s evocative, windswept Cornish soundscape. The production is crisp and utterly clear yet it still sounds salty and raw, retaining that anthemic Bellowhead-meets-Mumford & Sons sound, as if beamed live from The Pickled Crab.

It helps that the songs are authentic and burrow quickly and deeply into your ears. Button’s ‘A Little Life’ and the ensemble numbers such as ‘The Pickled Crab’, ‘When E’re She Looked at Me’, ‘Will You Go?’ and the stompalong ‘Rollin’ Away’ will leave you banging your feet and slapping the furniture.

Philippa Hogg in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Picture: Juan Coolio

With Clark’s score, for every emotional peak there’s a trough, so the raucousness is balanced with some haunting, tender ballads – ‘The Kraken’s Lullaby’, ‘The Moon and the Sea’ and ‘The Tide is Comin’ In’ are particularly heartfelt, but the standout number is surely ‘Time’, led by a transcendent Clare Foster (as Benjamin’s wife Elowen).

You can let the whole thing wash over you, but if you’re inclined to focus, much of the narration is retained, so it’s a good listen if you attune yourself to the drama. Much like Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along – another musical built on a reversal of time – the support structure is there to allow you to keep track of what’s going on, and the narration, whether spoken or sung, is woven through the entire piece with great craft. Admittedly, there is an obsession with numbers and dates that you have to write off as charming and idiosyncratic, bu it’s all in service of the folkloric storytelling.

Credited alongside Dagleish are Foster, Matthew Burns, Jonathan Charles, Oonagh Cox, Katy Ellis, Anna Fordham, Philippa Hogg, Elliot Mackenzie, Ann Marcuson, Jack Quarton and Benedict Salter.

I’ve been waiting for a recording since first catching the show in its earlier incarnation at the Southwark Theatre’s Little space, and it’s been worth the wait. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button feels more than merely a cast recording. It’s almost a concept album – an achingly human piece of musical storytelling in its own right that does a great justice to a great production but also transcends the confines of the stage.

Craig Glenday