“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” at The Public Theater (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Darren Clark and Jethro Thompson’s musical adaptation of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button shares only the basic premise of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which it’s based: Benjamin Button ages in reverse. He is born as a 70-year-old man and dies as a baby. Nobody knows why, least of all Button. In the short story, it’s not really an issue and everyone accepts him for who he is. Fitzgerald flies through Button’s entire life in thirty pages: he goes to war, he gets married, they have children. His trajectory is pretty typical for a man of the late 1800s – aside from the aging backwards thing.

Clark and Thompson, by necessity, create more plot and conflict for Benjamin along the way. He still goes to war, still gets married, and still has children, but now he’s taught from the day of his birth that he should be ashamed of his condition. His truly terrible parents lock him in a room and forbid any contact with the outside world. Once he is strong enough to escape their confines, he still carries that shame with him, hiding his condition from even the people he loves. It adds a complicating wrinkle to an otherwise straightforward piece of fantasy. 

In the musical, Benjamin is now born in 1918 and ends his seventy years in 1988. This shift in timeline situates Benjamin’s life against several world events including World War II and Apollo 11 landing on the moon. The authors have also transposed the story from Baltimore to a small fishing harbor in Cornwall. The reasoning behind that is not altogether clear aside from an apparent fondness for the aesthetic. But the small-town nature also affords Clark and Thompson the opportunity to populate the musical with a variety of town oddballs. We get to know many of the town’s residents as their lives run parallel to Button’s, but in the more traditional direction. That they’re all a little kooky shows that even though Button has his condition, he’s still a pretty normal guy.

Andrew Durand, reigning king of the off-center musical, brings his disarming charm, uniquely yearning voice, and sensitive emotionality to Button. It’s a difficult task to play this everyman who is not like every man, but Button’s gradation from geriatric to infant is handled with simplicity and grace. Button’s shame permeates through Durand’s performance informing every interaction he has. 

Compton’s production (he’s also the director and scenic designer) has great atmosphere thanks to his own slanted-dock set, Anna Kelsey’s costumes, and Zoe Spurr’s lighting design. The rickety-appearing levels of this fishing dock serve to condense the playing space, concentrating the action to a small piece of the full stage. It emphasizes the closeness of this village as its inhabitants crowd around to tell Button’s story. Kelsey’s costumes look worn to death, lovingly mended, and put back on again. They carry their wearer’s history. Spurr’s lighting design, coupled with whatever haze and/or fog is wafting across the sea, has a delicious thickness. It almost feels like you could run your hand through the air and touch the moonlight.

Compton makes the decision to have the ensemble narrate Benjamin’s story directly to the audience in the kind of stilted, declamatory tone that is only found in musical theatre. Paired with Chi-San Howard’s stamping, rotating choreography, I started to get the sense that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would have the taste of Come From Away, a flavor to which I am allergic. While they do share some of the same qualities, Benjamin Button is not as saccharine or feel-goody as Come From Away. Benjamin Button is tightly focused on the idea that time is passing, that we only have one life. It wouldn’t be a waste to spend part of it at this musical.