Jethro Compton’s love of Americana really seems to have translated into stories audiences want to see: According to the programme notes his work is regularly staged in the USA and South Korea, he himself works steadily as a director in Vienna, and
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has been licensed for fifty productions worldwide. But while his first venture into musical theatre (book and lyrics, with Darren Clark providing music and lyrics,) once again takes an American classic as its inspiration, this time he brings the story closer to home. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fantasy
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is transplanted to North Cornwall between 1918 and 1988, with a cast of five actor-musicians telling the story of a man who’s born a fully-grown seventy-year-old, and ages backwards. James Marlowe plays Benjamin, whose birth as a frail old man is such a horror to his mother (Rosalind Ford) that she soon kills herself, while his father (Joey Hickman) locks him away in an attic room so that people don’t see him and start to ask questions.
