One of the pleasures of the Oscar-winning screen version of Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days” is the gimmick of casting dozens of movie stars in cameo roles — and the fun of spotting everyone from Buster Keaton as a train conductor to Frank Sinatra as a saloon singer.
Theatrical Outfit’s stage treatment of the globe-trotting adventure story (adapted by Mark Brown) travels in an opposite direction that’s no less agreeable — using a trio of quick-changing actors to portray a host of bit parts.
For instance, before the lovely Kate Donadio settles into the role of an Indian damsel in distress, she’s a virtually unrecognizable hoot as a stiff and aged manservant (replete with skull cap and bushy sideburns), and later a spunky newspaper boy (periodically recounting plot points that happen offstage).
The sweep and spectacle of Verne’s original novel translated easily in the film, with its breathtaking array of exotic locations. On stage, it’s a riskier venture. Brown’s script cuts some corners from the outset: e.g., gone is a memorable hot-air balloon ride. Elsewhere, the story relies on the imagination of a good director to take a few actors and props, in one scene, and create a surprisingly believable elephant.
Directed by Clint Thornton, whose “The Snow Queen” was among last season’s most striking productions, the Outfit’s “Around the World” is dotted with isolated visual flourishes like that. (Dig the strobe light/slow-motion effect during a train mishap.) In the larger sense of transporting us from a confined space and into the whole wide world, however, the show generally disappoints.
Massive scenery is out of the question; this isn’t the Fabulous Fox, after all. Thornton lowers a couple of Chinese lanterns to establish one setting, or positions a few potted shrubs to represent another. But he fails to take full advantage of his backdrop —a screen he utilizes to simulate generic clouds or waves, rather than to specify where we are on the map at any given time.
Outfit artistic director Tom Key plays Verne’s stalwart hero, Phileas Fogg, who wagers to complete the titular journey, putting a sizable fortune (and his outsized reputation) on the line. He’s described as among “the most remarkable and remarked upon” men in all of London, but you wouldn’t know it based on Key’s curiously subdued performance, which lends more credence to another initial assessment of Fogg as a Madame Tussaud wax figure.
Not only doesn’t he come across as suitably eccentric, neither is Key’s Fogg endearing enough to validate what eventually becomes a voyage of self-discovery. The character’s presumably transformed by the end, although it barely registers in Key’s work.
Paul Hester, one of our brightest if most under-employed actors, is a welcome sight as his wily butler, the put-upon Passepartout. And who can resist the versatile, ubiquitous William S. Murphey? Put him in an opium den, give him a hookah and some throw pillows, and sit back and enjoy what’s otherwise an often bumpy trip.
Theater review
“Around the World in 80 Days”
Grade: B-
Through Nov. 8. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays; 2:30 p.m. Saturday (Oct. 24 and Nov. 2 only). $15-$35. Theatrical Outfit, 84 Luckie St. 678-528-1500. theatricaloutfit.org
Bottom line: All the world is not a stage.
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