The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: a 'magical' show with 'an electrifying emotional charge'

The "latest fringe musical to vault nimbly into the West End" is this stirring, folk- infused adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story about a man who lives his life in reverse, said Nick Curtis in The Standard. The story has already been turned into a film, starring Brad Pitt. But this stage version – first shown in a more limited form at the Southwark Playhouse in 2019 – is the one to treasure.

Jethro Compton and Darren Clark have relocated the action from Jazz Age Baltimore to 20th century Cornwall, said Alun Hood on What's on Stage, and their "shimmering, soaring" score encompasses "folk ballads of aching longing, fishermen's shanties, rollicking drinking songs, and rousing chorales that thrill the blood". Intelligent and piercingly witty, this is a "magical" show, with an "electrifying emotional charge that seldom lapses into sentimentality". It's one of the best new British musicals in decades.

A story about someone who is born a hunched old man and gets steadily younger isn't necessarily illuminating, since it is no one else's experience, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. But "an acting/singing/strumming ensemble" watching this process on stage, "tears welling because they're ordinary mortals", makes sense of the conceit.

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The plot's oddities are easier to overlook on inevitably looks about 40 years old throughout, John Dagleish is "sincerely affecting" in the role, not the "human special effect that Pitt was"; Clare Foster, meanwhile, is fabulous as Elowen, the bar girl with whom Benjamin falls in love – and who must contend with seeing him grow younger as she gets older.

I am afraid I found the evening pretty hard going, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times. "There's not a bad song here, but nor is there a really great one." And for all the "imagination and verve" of the staging, the effect is of being "ambushed by a Christian folk group". Perhaps "the winsomeness is occasionally overdone", said Emma John in The Guardian. But it's such a "vivacious" production, it really does touch the heart.

Ambassadors Theatre, London WC2. Until 15 February