Theater review
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
Two hours and 40 minutes, with one 15-minute intermission. At the Public Theater.
Much as Benjamin Button ages backwards from aged to toddler, the new musical “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” also begins off unrecognizably from where it in the end winds up. From annoying to stunning.
That stark reversal could be because its type, folksy and verbose Paul Bunyan-ish exposition in overeager group songs, takes some getting used to. But reality be advised, that usually complicated and self-satisfied side never grew on me.
The candy show from London with a new American forged that opened Wednesday evening at the Public Theater with Broadway aspirations improves, and staggeringly so, in the second half when many of the aspect characters and story-theater shtick get the heave-ho and its wealthy romantic leads are allowed to reside and breathe more freely and actually.
They’re Benjamin, performed from tomb to womb by Andrew Durand, and his life-long love Elowen, earthily portrayed by Kelsee Kimmel.
Andrew Durand (proper) stars as the title function in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Joan Marcus
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That pair of actors and their earnest ardour, which radiate real love for each other rather than the hopped-up theatrical suggestion of it, is “Button”’s best asset and enough of a motive to advocate this very honest show.
But it takes a while for the materials and director Jethro Compton’s manufacturing to calm down and discover that focus.
Most will know F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story from David Fincher’s film starring Brad Pitt. Composer Darren Clark and e book author Compton (both co-wrote the lyrics) have moved the motion from Baltimore in the US to coastal Cornwall, England, and modified the graduation level from 1860 to 1918.
That’s good. For one, during the First World War, hundreds of thousands of British kids lost their dads. Kids had to grow up fast — not unlike Benjamin. And then there’s the acoustic, sad-happy, pub music of that time, which makes up this lush, Celtic-adjacent rating. But most importantly, what could be more surreal than Britain reeling from one world conflict that devastated a technology of younger males while being just 20 years away from getting dragged into another one?
Benjamin is born at 70 years previous and ages backwards. Joan Marcus
Well, how about a child born at 70 years previous?
He’s Benjamin, who’s already an previous man with the means to communicate and learn and even arrived full with a pair of glasses. Thankfully, this is the one plot level the musical does not endeavor to clarify.
But it does shortly introduce an undercurrent of darkness. Benjamin’s mom Mary (Sachiko Mae) hates that she gave delivery to what she believes to be a freak of nature. Doubling down, she sings an almostly laughably moody tune evaluating her child to the Kraken, a giant squid that drags ships to the watery deep. Ouch! Mary makes Joan Crawford look like Maria von Trapp. And his father Roger (Brandon J. Ellis) resents his son for what his spouse does to herself.
Elowen (Kelsee Kimmel) and Benjamin fall in love. Joan Marcus
As the years and wrinkles wash away, Benjamin has to discover inspirations to be optimistic, as he spiritedly sings in the musical’s best tune, “A Little Life.” The music is always fairly and transportive, if a tad repetitive.
His No. 1 motive for being turns out to be the native barmaid Elowen. He’s 55 (sorta) and she’s 25. Uh oh! Being that this is 2026, she makes a speech about why the mid-50s is the excellent age for a man. The Public’s donors will be delighted.
The two fall in love and they plan to depart city — only parental meddling separates them for years.
The Celtic-adjacent rating is fairly, but a tad repetitive. Joan Marcus
The other battle with Act One, and why there is so much narration, is that a entire lot occurs. Benjamin begins at 70 and ends the first half at 44. He goes off to sea for a decade and enlists in the Royal Navy during World War II. Entire exhibits have been about far less than one of those.
The seafaring voyage and oceanside locale is taken benefit of by Compton’s set (this man’s a actual Jeth of all trades), resembling a sunken fishing boat. Little buoys floating above the stage mild up to become celestial our bodies at nighttime. Though more than anything it evokes that 2010s pattern on Broadway of hip little analog exhibits that seem to take place in dank previous pubs, like “Once” and “Hadestown.”
Similarly, the costumes by Anna Kelsey both nod to the period and make the forged look like they work in an moral butcher store in Red Hook.
The forged of “Benjamin Button” are actor-musicians.
That cool ensemble of actor-musicians performs the rating effectively and sings splendidly, but I struggled to keep straight the many, many characters they play in the first 90 minutes.
And then the tide of Act Two rolls in, and the show becomes less of a rattled-off sequence of occasions and on-the-nose reference to “time” and a more mature musing on loss and how we willingly waste so much of our lives.
Durand and Kimmel are sublimely romantic in the second half, and not in that prescribed musical-theater method. Maybe it’s because these are not your typical romantic leads. What they’re doing is grounded and palpable.
The musical hits its stride in the stunning second act. Joan Marcus
Unlike Durand, who is solely Benjamin all evening, Kimmel performs quite a few roles, including a sheep (see, this sort of stuff gnaws at me). But I seen that after some particularly emotional numbers, or scenes in which Elowen confronts Benjamin, that she wouldn’t simply snap out of it and fall into line with the relaxation of the forged. Those emotions would linger.
Her dedication and chemistry with Durand makes the musical. And so does he. The actor’s profession has been a enjoyable and bizarre one to observe. Mostly he’s wound up in out-there comedies, such as “The Robber Bridgeroom,” the Go-Gos show “Head Over Heels” and corny “Shucked.” But during last season’s “Dead Outlaw” — in which he was principally typecast as a corpse — Durand sang a serene tune called “Normal” that made me need to see more of his dramatic chops.
Wondrous Durand delivers on that need. He’s got a fascinating face that here permits him to, effectively, play a child and an previous man without having to overdo it, which could simply occur with a broad and dorky script like this one. He has an ease, lightness and a informal knowledge that contrasts with the cacophony all around him. And the actor is intensely affecting close to the finish as Benjamin has his Emily Webb in “Our Town” realization as a 50-year-old in a younger man’s physique.
“Who knows how much time you have left?,” he tells his son, who is now the same organic age. “Don’t you waste a second of it.”
And then the unhappy inevitable occurs. Ashes to ashes, us to home.
