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Around the World in 80 Days in CT - A Zany, Clever Journey
Categories: UncategorizedPlant your tongue firmly in your cheek and prepare to be thoroughly entertained during the zany and clever comedy Around the World in 80 Days, which has opened the 2009 Season at Westport Country Playhouse.
Mark Shanahan stars as Victorian-era gentleman Phileas Fogg who bets some of the chaps at his London club that he can make a journey around the world in 80 days in Mark Brown’s adaptation of the Jules Verne classic. Fogg is accompanied by faithful servant Passepartout (Evan Zes). Along the way he's joined by Aouda (Lauren Elise McCord), an Indian princess whose life he saves, and on his tail from the outset is police Detective Fix (Jeff Biehl), who believes Fogg is a notorious thief trying to make an escape with a hefty sum of stolen money.
All of the cast members, except for Shanahan, play anywhere from two to 15 characters. Director Michael Evan Haney deftly guides them through their paces to create a very entertaining production that relies on skilled physical comedy and timing. Actors bounce, sway and move in sync to simulate transportation on trains, ships and even an elephant, all created with minimalist props within scenic designer Joseph P. Tilford’s columned frame. Passpartout’s efforts to serve a formal tea on the bouncing elephant are particularly amusing.
Highlighting the adventure are two foley artists, Mark Parenti and Elizabeth Helitzer, who use numerous musical instruments and devices to perform Parenti’s original music as well as endless sound effects from upstage behind the action. They also bounce in time to the rhythm of a train or boat to nicely give theatergoers a complete sense of locomotion.
Haney’s skillfully and successfully stops the action at times to have one or more of the characters involved in the current scene step out to share thoughts directly with the audience. When they finish, they step back into the action, and often the return to the play is funnier than the aside itself.
Zes displays acumen both with physical clowning and comedic delivery of lines, often embellishing his French accent to tell us the heirloom watch on which he keeps time for the group as they try to beat the 80-day deadline is a perfect “tom piss.”
Shanahan is dashing as the unfeeling bachelor governed by the rules of mathematics and logic who finds his emotions turned upside down by the beautiful and smart Aouda. McCord, bedecked in David Kay Mickelsen’s beautifully detailed and sumptuous costumes, does a nice job of combining Aouda’s feminine charms with intellectual depth.
Depending on the composition of the audience on any given night, theatergoers may find that laughs can be found from those around them: children who cannot stop giggling at the antics. And why not? Such an adventure and production should appeal to the child in us all.
---- Lauren Yarger
Around the World in 80 Days plays at the Westport Country Playhouse (25 Powers Court, Westport, CT) through May 9. Performance times are Tuesdays at 8pm, Wednesdays at 2pm and 8pm, Thursday and Friday at 8pm, Saturdays at 4pm and 8pm and Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are $30-$55 and can be purchased by calling 203-227-4177 (toll free 1-888-927-7529) or by visiting www.westportplayhouse.org. Student and educator discounts are available.
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