AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS BAC to 12 January
London
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
by Phil Wilmott, freely adapted from Jules Verne. Music by Annemarie Lewis Thomas and Phil Wilmott.
BAC Main Theatre To 12 January 2002
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS 020 7223 2223
Review Timothy Ramsden 9 December
A Christmas show with more soul than sheen justifies a trip to Battersea.
Acceptable songs, tolerable acting, rudimentary staging. Yet somehow this spirited show rises above its limitations with all the confidence of Phileas Fogg in his hot-air balloon. It's not a case of the whole being better than its parts. Once events start swinging along they fit together with an absolute rightness that might not make the rough places plain, but leaves the whole terrain a pleasure to travel.
It’s a show with perfectly judged ambitions, at times cheekily taking on the big musical, as with a tongue-in-cheek production number filling the stage with a Mormon preacher's wives – before revealing several to be disguised outlaws.
Elsewhere Eighty Days makes light of the factual and fictional. There's Queen Victoria having a regal flutter on Fogg's success, or a jubilant Sherlock Holmes so delighted at his compatriot's impending success he allows Watson to do the day's crossword.
Of course Fogg's romance with Aouda, the Indian Queen he rescues from suttee, is going to happen eventually. But while we wait for the blossoming there's one of the show's funniest songs where a female English do-gooder, assuming them to be married, asks what the hostile couple love in each other.
When romance comes it's as unbelievable as you'd expect. Rae Baker's Aouda suffers nobly, but all Bill Ward's tact cannot conceal the unconvincing change – or discovery - of heart in the previously unemotional Fogg.
Still, such things can be forgiven in a show that includes a song to an elephant (William Jerome and Jimmie V. Monaco's Aba Daba Honeymoon) and one to a jazzy Chinese Dragon. Then there's the joy of Timothy Mitchell's servant, a conflagration of good intentions blundering benevolently around, seemingly at the mercy of a couple of arms which apparently have means of propulsion independent of the remainder of his physique.
Jean Passepartout: Timothy Mitchell
Phileas Fogg: Bill Ward
Rae Baker: Queen Aouda
Kate O' Flaherty: Chevaun March
Captain Fix: Phil Wilmott
Miss Fotherington: Jane Lucas
Hitch: A Mormon Preacher: Paul Hazel
Queen Victoria: Shirley Barr
Disraeli: Alan Atkins
Sherlock Holmes: Nick Smithers
Dr Watson: Paul Oliver
Journalist: Ed Jaspers
An Experienced Traveller: Angela Michaels
Dining Saloon Singer: Sarah Rotheram
Parisian Railway Porter: Joseph Wicks
Policeman: Jordan Saflor
Gondolier: Simon Greenhill
Yuki: Amy Ip
Trudy: Natalie Tapper
Svetlana: Emma Thornett
Helga: Stephanie Tavernier
Morag: Sarah Lawn
Pam: Holly Boothby
Sheila: Chantal Bell
Director: Phil Wilmott/Catriona McLaughlin
Musical director: Annemarie Lewis Thomas
Designer/Lighting: Hansjorg Schmidt
Costume: Andri Korniotis
Sound: Adam Keeper
Puppets: Mervyn Millar
Choreographer: Jack Gunn
Fight director: Brett Yount
2001-12-11 01:24:36