The University of Manchester Dramatic Society (UMDS) have created their own stage adaptation of this unusual short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and relocated it in setting from the United States to Britain. A fluid ensemble piece with a keen sense of absurdity and some innovative special effects, this evening’s performance took place at the King’s Arms, Salford.
The simple set consisted of one large wooden frame covered in bubbled glass, and a few portable sticks of wooden furniture. The costuming in shades of beiges, browns and creams, with the occasional appearance of sexy black and sequins, was an eclectic mix of styles from the 1890s to the 1920s that ignored what time period the story was actually occurring in. (The original story takes place from 1860 to 1930.) With a cast of nine, most of the time the small stage was filled with posing bodies, as the company took us through the narrative of a man, Benjamin Button, being born elderly and then, through his long life, ageing in reverse until he is a baby and dies.
Laurie Bayley-Higgins starred as Benjamin Button, and he is a talented actor who did a very credible job with no more than a cotton-wool beard and some grey eyebrows at the beginning to help him, and then nothing at all except his own acting ability for most of the rest of the performance. Co-directors Joseph Conway and Imogen Hayes put a big emphasis on movement and physical characterisation with their cast; and Bayley-Higgins physically worked his way through from trembling and shivering in his early life to toddling babylike at the end of it. He also had a droll sense of comic timing, and made the most of highlighting the absurdities his condition put him in.
Thomas Valerio and Mae Lankshear were Benjamin’s parents, played with frantic energy and manic desperation as they tried to retain their bourgeois respectability while dealing with this astounding situation. Grace Johnstone was an earthy and even more respectable Hildegarde: the young woman who marries Benjamin in the belief that she’s partnering a man three decades her senior. Neil John matched the other three actors as Roscoe, Benjamin’s son and later guardian, wrangling to keep his own respectability intact once he’s middle-aged, and Benjamin has aged downwards into a moody teenager. The story’s emphasis on how Benjamin’s family felt he was ageing in reverse on purpose, and that he really shouldn’t, was very nicely handled.
Beatrice Nettuno played glamourous undercover journalist Sylvia with dry sensuality; and Giulia Grillo, Hannah Blau and Nina Vavpotic were the ensemble, playing everything from talking shop mannequins to Hildegards’ tipsy male suitors. There was a lot of group physical work, and though it was a bit youth theatre in flavour and overly-frenetic, it did serve the production. Joseph Conway’s sound design featured a great deal of unstable-sounding jazz; and the use of live snare drums on stage, coupled with strobe lighting, portrayed Benjamin’s military service in an unspecified war very effectively.
Though Joseph Conway and Imogen Hayes are credited as co-writers, apparently this piece was created through group-devising. This really did show in the dialogue. Even though the costuming had put it in a post-modernist world, it was a little jarring to have so many modern swear words used; and as the setting was now British instead of American, there were also lots of period-sounding British words to get across that the characters were well-off, though semiotically that felt a little overdone and the characters were too highly upper middle-class to be involved in the hardware business. When Benjamin was conveying his teenage coolness, his dialogue became 1950s in style. This is an area that could have been researched a little more.
Overall though, this was a strong adaptation, and the enthused audience gave the company a standing ovation.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 12/12/19
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