Review - Around The World In 80 Days: Racing With The Clock

First things first; there is no hot air ballooning in Mark Brown's stage adaptation of Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days, just in case your only familiarity With the plot comes from Michael Todd's not exactly faithful 1956 movie version. (For that matter, there aren't any martial arts fight scenes either, in case you only saw the Jackie Chan remake.) But if Verne's hero did dabble in a bit of ballooning, I'm sure Brown and director Michael Evan Haney would have found some clever way to depict it in this lively and entertaining little production that's landed at the Irish Repertory Theatre in association With Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

Yes, the similarities to the current Broadway hit, The 39 Steps, are obvious, but neither production is the first to have a small company With minimal set pieces tell an epic tale through creative staging and lots of multiple-casting.

The story, sticking to the way Verne actually wrote it in 1873, concerns wealthy Londoner Phileas Fogg, a stiff-jawed bloke who desires a life of such exacting mathematical consistency that he fires his valet for accidentally delivering his shaving water at 84 degrees instead of the usual 86. Daniel Stewart, the only cast member With a single role, plays him With a fiercely energetic deadpan calm, and nicely restrained sincerity.

"The unforeseen does not exist," Fogg insists as he wagers his fellow club members 20,000 pounds that he can circumnavigate the globe by rail and steamer in 80 days. With his newly-hired gentleman's gentleman, Passepartout, by his side (Evan Zes plays the role With an absurdly thick French accent and wildly kinetic clowning skills), Fogg's travels take him through India, China and the American plains, encountering a typhoon, a Comanche attack and some unreliable train and boat schedules along the way.

On his tail is Detective Fix of Scotland Yard, who suspects the traveler of being a bank robber, but can only arrest him With a proper warrant and while on British soil. John Keating, who also plays eight other roles, is very amusing as the bumbling lawman who must help the suspect achieve his goal in order to be able to stop him.

Lauren Elise McCourt generally plays it straight in her main role as Auoda, an Indian woman who Fogg rescues from being sacrificed and accompanies him back to London, becoming a love interest who brings out the slightest traces of vulnerability he's willing to release. Jay Russell, however, is all over the map With his 16 characters of various nationalities, most notably an outlandishly brash American colonel who sports a thick drawl and comic cultural ignorance.

Though David K. Mickelsen provides a multitude of attractive period costumes, adaptable to many quick changes, Joseph P. Tilford's set is little more than an assortment of chairs, tables and trunks which director Haney uses to fluidly change from one location to another, ably helped by Betsy Adams' lights and Michael Evan Haney's sound design, which is performed live on stage by two Foley Artists (Elizabeth Helitzer and Mark Parenti) playing various musical instruments and sound-making devices. Scenes where characters are riding on an elephant and later defending themselves against attacking Comanches while on a moving train are executed very effectively.

While the episodic plot does lose some steam here and there and the inclusion of a couple of anachronistic jokes seems cheap, the gusto With which the cast plays out the generally clever material helps smooth the rough patches. I'll wager you'll get more than a few good belly laughs out of this one.

Photo of Daniel Stewart, Evan Zes and Lauren Elyse McCourt by Sandy Underwood