Passepartout (Brad De Planche) ,Fogg (Richard Width) 
& Ouda (Margi Sharp)

Around the World in 80 Days

A play by Mark Brown
Adapted from the book by Jules Verne
Performed at the Goldman Theater (120 Seats)
Directed by Russell Treyz 

Time is running out for Phileas Fogg. In this exciting family adventure, Fogg faces a frenetic race that will ultimately change his life. Can he truly make his outrageous gamble to go around the world in 80 days?

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REVIEWS

Slapstick comedy is a world of laughs

The Orlando Weekly
By Al Krulick
Published 5/9/02
Pictured below: The cast - Eric Hissom, Margi Sharp, Richard Width, Brad De Planche, Philip Nolen
 
When William Shakespeare wrote, "All the world's a stage," it's unlikely he was proposing that the entire world should actually be placed upon a stage. But that is precisely what the creative team at the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival has accomplished in its high-spirited, fast-moving and flat-out hilarious new production of "Around the World in 80 Days," a play by Mark Brown, based upon the fictional work of Jules Verne.

Utilizing only a table, four chairs and various costume accouterments, but ably abetted by the top-flight performing skills of five accomplished and protean actors, director Russel Treyz spirits both cast and audience around the globe. They travel by rail from London to Suez; across India on train, foot and elephant; by freighter to Japan; over the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco on a tug; eastward to New York on the transcontinental railroad and ice sled (!); and finally back to England on a hijacked boat whose wooden frame must be broken apart and burned for fuel. All is completed in well under the 80-day deadline set by Verne's hero and his compatriots at London's posh Reform Club.

Along the way, the dour and proper English gentleman Phineas Fogg (Richard Width), his semireliable French manservant, Passepartout (Brad Deplanche), and their rescued Indian princess, Aouda (Margi Sharp), must conquer the obvious vicissitudes of the weather and ever-changing rail and boat schedules. They also must conquer the unforeseen challenges posed by crazed Hindu priests, a horde of marauding Apaches, Chinese opium dealers, recalcitrant civil servants and the tenacious machinations of Detective Fix (Eric Hissom), the Scotland Yard flatfoot who is determined to detain and arrest Fogg for a suspected robbery back in London.

In Brown's freewheeling and zany adaptation of Verne's 1872 novel, the action is unabashedly slapstick and frantic -- the travelers bound across seas and continents at breakneck and fearless speed. In one terrific scene, the entire party bounces up and down like water droplets on a hot stove, trying to maintain their balance in a speeding train -- one that is attempting to fly across a chasm once spanned by a now fallen bridge. In another, they are almost blown off the stage by a powerful typhoon that tosses their small sailboat hither and thither on the Sea of Japan.

The comic glue that holds the madcap adventuring together is the brilliant work of actor Philip Nolen, who plays 18 over-the-top personae with a breathless versatility that literally floods the stage with the sheer white light of his theatrical genius. Whether he is playing a bombastic British colonel, a xenophobic American Indian fighter, a hapless colonial judge, or any one of his wide assortment of clerks, sailors, engineers or port officials, the supremely talented Nolen manages to portray a complete, if often idiosyncratic, character who never fails to convulse the audience in paroxysms of laughter and delight.

Nolen is that rare kind of actor who absolutely commands the stage whenever he appears and yet is neither selfish in the company of his fellow performers, nor egotistical enough to subsume the script to his eccentric portrayals. Each gesture, each vocalization, each bit of comic business is precisely measured for the correct and appropriate impact. And as the evening progresses, the audience begins looking forward to his next depiction with unbridled and gleeful anticipation.

This is not to suggest that Nolen is working in a risible vacuum. On the contrary, his cohorts are more than capable of vaulting the high bar that he sets for his own comedic proficiency. Especially competent is the work of Brad DePlanche, who has turned in excellent performances this past season in two of the company's comic offerings, "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Much Ado About Nothing." Veteran company man Eric Hissom also shows off his formidable funniness in a variety of roles but is particularly effective as the aforementioned Detective Fix, the bumbling policeman who trails Fogg around the planet.

"Around the World in 80 Days" ends the Shakespeare Festival's season on a note of mirthful celebration of both the actors' craft and the audience's imagination. It is a buoyant and enjoyable journey and a fitting tribute to a classic work of fiction. In fact, the 80 days go by all too quickly.

Sun Never Sets on Imagination in Festival's 'Around the World'

The Orlando Sentinel
By Elizabeth Maupin
Posted May 8, 2002
Pictured below: Philip Nolen

There's a sound you hear on a roller coaster -- that semi-hysterical sound of people screaming and laughing at the same time.

You'll hear it again at the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival's home in Loch Haven Park, where Around the World in Eighty Days moves at about the speed of a roller coaster -- and covers a whole lot more territory.

Writer Mark Brown has taken Jules Verne's century-old comic novel and made it gallop across the stage. And the Shakespeare Festival's production, directed by Russell Treyz, brings together a cast of inspired comedians with the cleverness and style the festival's audiences have come to expect. If this show doesn't make you laugh, you'll have to look hard for something that will.

Brown's show is the fourth in a series of adaptations of 19th-century literature, from Dracula and Frankenstein to Edgar Allan Poe, that the festival has developed into full productions. But this one is the first that deserves -- and no doubt will have -- a long and happy life on the stage.

Those who remember the star-studded 1956 movie may be surprised to discover that Around the World has nothing to do with bull-fighting and less to do with balloons. But the story is the same -- that of the proper London gentleman, Phileas Fogg, who wagers that he can make it around the world almost faster than his fellow members of the Reform Club can finish their tea. With him goes his trusty French servant, Passepartout, while a mysterious Englishman named Fix trails them every step of the way.

Verne's novel is stocked with dozens of characters, seemingly endless settings and enough variety in transportation -- trains, steamships, elephants and so on -- to make hot-air balloons gratuitous. But Brown, who shaped his adaptation through the festival's PlayLab program of readings and workshops, has managed to distill the action down to two hours or less and the required actors to only five. And Treyz, with the help of scenic designer Bob Phillips, has figured out a way to tell the story by enlisting the audience's imagination. In your mind's eye you may see Bombay or Suez, but onstage all you see are a couple of movable shutters, a series of retractable signs, a solitary table and four plain wooden chairs.

That's all this production needs -- that and the sound effects an actor can make to stand in for the trumpet of an elephant or the call of a bird. But it's the sound of a metronome at the start that serves as fair warning: This show does not have a moment to lose.

Neither do the cast members, one of whom plays nine different roles and another 18. The continents may be whizzing before your eyes, but the real suspense in this show is wondering where and how actor Philip Nolen will turn up next.

On the face of it, Nolen doesn't even have a leading role: that honor goes to Richard Width, who plays the punctilious, ever-resourceful Fogg, and to Brad DePlanche, the giggly, ingenuous Passepartout. Monocle in place, the patrician-looking Width makes a Fogg who can deal with everything but the beautiful Indian princess Aouda, and the relentless DePlanche uses a cartoon voice and a Clouseau accent to make a puppyish Passepartout. (He also turns a mean cartwheel.)

Margi Sharp brings a demure intelligence to Aouda, and she serves well enough in a couple of very minor roles. But it's Nolen and Eric Hissom-- who play nearly everyone else -- who make this comedy soar higher and higher. In Hissom's largest role, he gives Detective Fix a hangdog haplessness, and the least of his roles are just as clever -- the Reform Club member, for example, with an apparently permanent sense of outrage. And Nolen . . . well, Nolen ought to be canonized for the ridiculous variety and the rubber face he brings to his army of roles -- the hearty British aristocrat, the crazed American colonel and all the rest.

The tenacious pace may get a bit wearying just before intermission, and the script contains one clunker (no self-respecting Anglican would substitute the word reverend for priest). But Brown has taken Verne's droll wit and made it broader, and Treyz has taken Brown's script and made it spin. His actors are always moving: When they're on a train, they're shaking, and when they're on an elephant they're jouncing this way and that.

Nobody had to go to the pachyderm-rental store for this show, although they came up with a nice set of silly hats and an impressive pair of teeth. What Around the World in Eighty Days does is make you imagine trains and steamships and incipient human sacrifices. You may not exactly see it. But there's an elephant on this stage nonetheless.

"80 Days" a trip you should all take!

Posted 5/8.02
Ink 19 Magazine
by Carl F. Gauze
Pictured below: Eric Hissom

They say getting there is half the fun, but when you're heading to the place you started from, it's all the entertainment. Eccentric Phileas Fogg (Width) is slightly less interesting than a 2x4, but when a causal conversation about the new travel technology of 1872 comes up, he instantly bets all he has that he can get around the world and back to the reform club in a small but precisely specified time period. He grabs his new servant Passepartout (DePlanche), and head off to the Suez, pursued by the inimitable Detective Fixx (Hissom). Fixx is convinced that Fogg is a bank robber, and needs to nab him to go on to the next pinnacle of his miserable career. It's a mad dash to India, where Fogg takes a few hours to rescue beautiful Aouda (Margi Sharp) from a suttee fire. He does his level best to ignore her charms as they charge on to America, New York, and back to Jolly Old England where Fixx finally exercises his warrant and arrests Fogg. Does he miss the rendezvous with cash? He thinks so, until the final Plot Point appears - Victorians had a very fuzzy view of the International Date Line, and since they were chasing the sun and not reading the papers or going to church, they've snuck home a day early. Huzzah!

Well, ignore the navigation and relish the characters. This madcap chase plays out on a small stage set with 4 chairs and a table, and, with more enthusiasm than most 6-years olds can muster, the cast turns them into boats, building, elephants and opium dens. At the calm center of this maelstrom is Fogg, who barely shows any emotion even when confessing his love to Aouda. Bouncing off of him like excited nitrogen atoms are a host of locals, mostly played by the incredibly versatile Philip Nolen, a man who can fall flat on his back in his own length, and swing his arm around in a salute that might cause elbow damage. DePlanche's Passepartout (pass key, to those of you who forgot your French) is every bit as bouncy as Tigger, even rolling out a cartwheel to exit stage right. Between these guys and Hissom's spiffy comic timing, there wasn't a joked that missed, although most of the audience seemed mystified when Passepartout correctly pronounced "Illinois."

This is one of the most tightly wound comedies that UCF Shakespeare has ever pulled off. As a product of their Play lab reading series, it shows the value of some friendly audience review early on. A tight script coupled with a production that focused entirely on characterization and timing pulls Verne's novel into the new millennium, making "80 Days" a trip you should all take.

                                                                 Last Updated: 05/06/2007                    Copyright Orlando Shakespeare Theater