Twenty years ago, B Street Theatre debuted its production of playwright Mark Brown’s comedic version of “Around the World in 80 Days.” It proved so popular that the theater has staged it three more times over the years, including flying the cast across the world to present it in India.
Now B Street has brought “Around the World” back once again for the theater’s 40th anniversary with a talented cast, an impressive sound effects engineer, and state-of-the-art technology.
The play follows Jules Verne’s classic tale of a global adventure, but with a fanciful, playful, and silly adaptation. We have Phileas Fogg, a Londoner who has accepted a bet that he could travel around the world in 80 days – quite the feat in 1872.
And off we go, with Fogg accompanied by a newly hired servant Passeportout to ports and paths through London, India, Hong Kong, Japan, and San Francisco. Travel includes trains, ships, hikes, and even an elephant, all while facing many challenges along the way.
Little do Fogg and his servant know they are being followed by Detective Fixx, who is convinced Fogg is a suspected thief.
Throughout the play, the five-person cast masterfully portrays dozens of characters with a huge wardrobe of costumes and a plethora of accents, including British, French, Indian, and American.
The main character is Fogg, portrayed elegantly by Hunter Hoffman as a dapper English gentleman who at times stumbles through his journey. The rest of the talented cast – Arusi Santi, Greg Alexander, Tara Sissom, and Meher Mistry – are a swirl of characters who change wigs, costumes, and accents at a breakneck speed. Alexander is a familiar face in this production as the only cast member who has been in all of B Street’s productions of “Around the World.”