Ambassadors Theatre

Four stars

This West End show is the culmination of eight years work that started life as a fledgling musical in Southwark Playhouse into which creator and director Jethro Compton put £65,000 of his own money, so convinced was he that he was onto a good thing. He was right.

The result is all the more impressive when you consider that F Scott Fitzgerald’s original short story had already been adapted into a movie starring Brad Pitt. But instead of following that lead what makes this show unlike any of the other movie adaptations that populate West End stages is that the feel of this American story has been melted down and recast in an English mould.

Benedict Salter as Roger Button

Instead of the setting of Baltimore we open in north Cornwall (where Compton was raised). More than that the story has has been set to an English folk music score by composer Darren Clark that makes you want to lean against a bar with a pint of Doom Bar as this excellent cast relates the curious story of of its eponymous hero who was born an old man in 1917, and gets younger as those around him get older.

In the title role John Dagleish conveys the reversal the biological body clock with nothing more than the stoop, stick and suit with which his Benjamin was born (don’t ask), straitening and losing the props of age as the show progresses.

The storytelling, related by musicalised narration, could be clearer. But with a set criss-crossed with great wooden joists like a Cornwall quay and an ensemble cast of terrific actor musicians there is nothing that looks or sounds like this show in the West End.