Around the World in 80 Days

As the British Empire approached its zenith in the late 19th-Century, fascination with science and technology dominated the popular imagination throughout the industrialized world. This mindset was epitomized in the writings of Jules Verne, who wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before any practical means for doing so had been invented. Parlaying British global dominance and their penchant for punctuality and mechanical exactitude, and following on the heels of three major breakthroughs in world travel—transcontinental railroads in the U.S. (1869) and India (1870) and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869)—Verne wrote the whimsical novel, Around the World in 80 Days in 1873.

The novel has been adapted twice for the big screen (Michael Todd's memorable 1956 musical and Jackie Chan's 2004 summer hodge-podge). Mark Brown's stage adaptation, currently running at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and making the rounds at other summer theatre festivals, is the truest to the book of all these efforts, revealing Verne's growing talent as an entertainer in addition to his gifted scientific imaginings.

Matthew Mueller as Passepartout and Sam Sandoe as Phineas Fogg Photo: Larry Harwood, University of Colorado Photo Department

The premise is straightforward—the highly logical and practical English gentleman, Phineas Fogg, bets his cronies at the Reform Club £20,000 that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. With his new French butler, the ever-resourceful Passepartout, in tow, Fogg encounters a variety of obstacles that put his success in doubt and threaten to gut his fortune.

With nary a change to the original setting, director Philip Sneed (the new CSF artistic director) milks the comedic opportunities by turning the impressive world map backdrop that tracks the voyage into a Laugh-In style game board, with characters unexpectedly appearing in windows or entering through doors that pop out of a continent here or an ocean there. Along with Andrew Bechert's other clever scenic elements, which include a stack of luggage that turns into an elephant, the production demands and receives our "imaginary puissance."

Elgin Kelly as Detective Fix and Randy Moore as Director of Police Photo: Larry Harwood, University of Colorado Photo Department

Doing yeoman's duty as 16 different characters is the Denver Center Theatre Company's irrepressible Randy Moore who, to our delight, for example, exits an Indian clerk one moment and appears as a pirate the next. Moore's infinitely elastic face and archetypal bodily dispositions have us in stitches before he even opens his mouth to exercise one of his well-polished dialects.

Veering physically from rangy to athletic and emotionally from servant to savior, Matthew Mueller's Passepartout is the wildcard to Sam Sandoe's steady straight man, Fogg, who bail out each other and assorted others as they race against the clock and transportation schedules to make their deadline.

Elgin Kelly hides her considerable charms beneath the matter-of-fact-challenged persona of Detective Fix who, despite her rational pretensions and delusional pursuit of Fogg on robbery charges, attracts the attentions of the loyal Passepartout. Kelly also exercises her madcap talents with eight other equally quirky characterizations.

Sam Sandoe as Phineas Fogg and Jamie Ann Romero as Aouda Photo: Larry Harwood, University of Colorado Photo Department

In the end, it is Jamie Ann Romero's Aoudia that saves Fogg from his dreary, logically-mired self and the story from an exercise in clockwork by investing the proceedings with exotic flair and warm heart.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's Around the World in 80 Days runs through August 18th in repertory with Julius Caesar, All's Well That End's Well, A Servant of Two Masters, and A Midsummer-Night's Dream on the University of Colorado-Boulder campus. 303-492-0554.

Bob Bows