Ambassadors; Finborough; Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London
Jethro Compton’s folky Cornish musical sweeps into the West End with fiddles and fudge; writer Ché Walker plays a fiery ex-con on a mission; and new ghost stories offer more charm than alarm

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is very curious indeed. It began as a startling short story by F Scott Fitzgerald: a baby is born as an old man who becomes younger the longer he lives; when he is over 70 he seems to be an infant. Director Jethro Compton , whose exhausting list of credits include not only composing the book and lyrics but creating the design, elaborated the plot and transplanted it from antebellum Baltimore to 20th-century Cornwall. Darren Clark added some lyrics and composed music inspired by Bellowhead, Laura Marling, Kate Rusby and sea shanties.

This folk musical, brought to swarming life by actor-musicians, opened at the small, enterprising Southwark Playhouse Elephant five years ago; now it has landed in the West End – and taken over the Ambassadors. The theatre bar has become the Pickled Crab, and sells seasalt fudge; the walls outside the auditorium are papered with headlines about the Penlee lifeboat disaster and other old Cornish news. More gumboots than glitz. Plenty of welly.