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It’s always helpful when a play’s title is also its plot. Jules Verne’s 1873 novel, adapted here by Laura Eason, follows Phileas Fogg as he bets his chums that he can make it around the world in - you’ll never guess - 80 days. It’s a fun and imaginative production, even if it’s a little loose at the seams.
There’s no doubt of director Lucy Bailey’s skill: big set pieces turn the stage into a train or steamboat or elephant. Bailey brings a quintessentially British eccentricity to the show that suits its quintessentially British protagonist, Phileas Fogg, though ambition occasionally trumps execution.
Fogg is played by the phlegmatic Robert Portal, who meets every hiccup along his journey with an unflappable stoicism. His certainty in the success of his wager makes for an excellent counterpoint to Simon Gregor as Fogg’s madcap French valet Passepartout - think Clouseau and Asterix rolled into one. Amid a few scenes whose timings don’t quite land, Tony Gardner as Inspector Fix brings impeccable comic ability.
Verne’s story captured the British Empire at its greatest expanse. With the Suez Canal and the linking of the Indian railways the world had shrunk. But that’s not exciting anymore. We’ve got Easy Jet and Interrail. So Eason’s adaptation rightly focuses on the story’s quaintness: Fogg’s dogged determination to win the bet, rather than enjoy the journey, mocks those people who ‘do’ countries rather than visit them. ‘We did Patagonia and Marrakesh last year’, they say, clinging to colonialism’s need to blindly conquer.
But despite Fogg’s refusal to absorb the extraordinary world going past him, he can’t help but gain some valuable lessons and an Indian princess wife from his trip. And there, perhaps, is the show’s Christmas message: however unwilling you may be, whatever journey you’re on, you won’t be able to avoid picking something up along the way - whether that’s a spouse, or just a dicky tummy.
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