AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
I heard a sound last night that rang in my ears like the soft lay of the sirens. It was a sound I’ve waited 14 months to hear. A sound like no other.. a live audience and the sound of applause. Yes, my first post Covid (we hope) theatre experience (indoors). Those indoors were also very special – a box seat at the Regency gem, the Theatre Royal, Bury; the production: ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. I felt a real buzz of excitement as the curtain rose on a busy stage and real actors emerged from the wings. Forget any sharpened critical faculties, I was just so thrilled to be in an audience albeit a socially distanced one.
The show began promisingly – a menacing and dramatic underscore, foggy lighting, the clang of Big Ben, a masked robber, a London bobby and a dastardly crime. And so the yarn began. Jules Verne’s adventure tale has long attracted artistic responses. I am old enough to remember the 1950s technicolour version starring David Niven as the upper crust Englishman Phileas Fogg who offers a bet to his posh Reform Club chums that he can circumnavigate the globe in the eponymous time frame. I remember reading the translated novel as a boy and being drawn into Verne’s epic journey through colourful lands and exotic locales. It is a brilliantly plotted narrative with Fogg and servant Passepartout being chased by Detective Fix of Scotland Yard (accusations of large-scale robbery). There is the dramatic rescue of an Indian princess from the funeral pyre, storms at sea, rail journeys thwarted and nick-of-time escapes all as the clock ticks towards the appointed hour.
How was all this done on a stage with just three actors? The delight of live theatre is that less is more. Filmic pyrotechnics are replaced by ingenuity and charm. The three players, OIiver Stoney, Roddy Peters and Naveed Kahn had those qualities in abundance and of course they had to play a multitude of characters. Kahn was especially magnetic as the twinkle-eyed narrator and the bumbling D.I Fix. Stoney was pitch perfect as the arrogant but kind-hearted toff Fogg and Peters in fine comic mood as Passepartout plus a range of comic characters. There was a deal of choreographic business and a few bits of true theatre magic such as the sudden appearance of an elephant and a fine trick with a disappearing character leaving only a coat behind. There was great energy and infectious mirth in their collective antics. Roddy Peters has more than a touch of Stan Laurel, especially when bowler hatted and there was some nice fourth-wall-breaking stuff as the threesome panicked when a fourth character was announced. It was intelligent panto.
If one were to wear more critical glasses (though my rose coloured ones are newly polished) there were two shortcomings to note. First, in a worthy attempt to reflect Verne’s 19th century style, the script by Toby Hulse sometimes felt unnecessarily archaic and a tad laboured. Secondly, the set, a wide panelled Gent’s club structure confined the lively actors in a rather narrow space which had the odd effect of sapping some of the stage energy.
All that said, 80 Days was great fun and a promising curtain raiser for the months ahead. It was so good to qualify as a bum on seat, to laugh aloud with others, to miss a heartbeat in a dramatic moment and most of all, at the end of an evening, to hear it: the unmistakeable sounds of hands clapped together. Applause, applause.
The show runs to 5 June https://theatreroyal.org/shows/around-the-world-in-eighty-days/
