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Jules Verne's classic novel Around the World in 80 Days gets a fresh and sensitive perspective in the Kansas City Repertory Theatre's opening night presentation of Laura Eason's writing and directorial adaptation. From the vantage point of a wired, Googled, You-Tubed, Twittering world, where circumnavigating the globe can be done in under 80 minutes, it was fun to be transported back to a time when performing such a feat in 80 days was considered a quantum leap in world travel.

As Around the World in 80 Days opens, we meet the precise, regimented and very English punctuality of Phileas Fogg (Lance Baker) - a British gentleman of means. He wakes up, eats breakfast, departs, arrives home from social engagements and turns in at exactly the same time each day. He fires his first valet (Usman Ally) because his tea one morning is not precisely 97 degrees, and upon hiring a replacement - his sidekick-to-be, Passepartout (Kevin Douglas) - he mildly chastises him for having his watch a few dozen seconds slow. While noting it to be not of great difference, he nonetheless comments that it is "worth mentioning." This is a man for whom time is a rigid construct to which all matters of life must conform absolutely.

Thus, when presented with the idea that recent advances in world travel (primarily because of the completion of the Suez Canal and the trans-Indian railway) make it possible to circumnavigate in 80 days, the precision with which the task need be accomplished immediately appeals to Fogg. That moment, however, reveals the irony: Fogg's sense of adventure lies not in the circumnavigation but with the precise timing of how the feat must be accomplished, and that he must arrive back at his gentlemen's club by 8:45 p.m. on December 21, 1872. The irony is further reinforced at the play's end when Fogg, preparing to depart on yet another world journey, acknowledges that while he had already traveled the world, he actually has never seen it. Thus begins Fogg's (and Passepartout's) journey, with Fogg content to be armed with only a travel log containing train and steamer schedules for every major station and port in the world. The passage of days, however, brings mounting delays that force Fogg to begin viewing time as a more fluid element, with which the ebbs and flows of life must synergize.

If time is Fogg's inanimate nemesis, time's counterpart in the physical world is Inspector Fix, a bumbling dunce who is convinced that Fogg is the at-large robber of a recent London bank heist. He spends the better part of the play chasing Fogg, well, around the world. Rounding out the quartet of permanent characters (the rest of the ensemble plays multiple roles) is the distressed Indian widow, Mrs. Aouda (Ravi Batista), whom Fogg rescues from ritual sacrifice in Bombay. With her entrance, about halfway through the first act, the two elemental themes of the play - time and personal intimacy - are set. It should come as no surprise that Fogg's lifelong obsession with the former had never left much room for the latter.

Lance Baker was near perfect as the very reserved Phileas Fogg, whose range of emotional development - from precise, reserved, gentleman to malleable, warm, gentle man - was so narrow that the subtlest of nuances are necessary to convey the growth of the character. Baker's mastery of his craft was evident from the opening scene, and watching him convey Fogg's development in minimalism was absolutely mesmerizing.

Kevin Douglas presented an energetic, wide-eyed Passepartout who lent comic relief to the adventures. However, the most generous thing I can say about his presentation is that it was adequate. As perfectly-cast as was Baker's Fogg, Douglas's Passepartout fell short. Here I must also admit a penchant for foreign accents and I found Douglas's French-inflected English to be unconvincing. Douglas's physicality, however, was impressive (think Ben Vereen) in several fight scenes, as well as a circus scene where he very confidently stood and walked on his hands for several seconds.

Joe Dempsey's Inspector Fix was brilliant. The bumbling comedic timing was perfect and hilarious. Physically, in demeanor and carriage, Dempsey/Fix was an absolute dead ringer for Monty Python's Eric Idle - a realization that, for me, made Dempsey's deliveries even funnier. I am not a laugh-out-loud kind of guy - even in live theatre settings - but I found myself doing so more times than I could count.

Ravi Batista's Mrs. Aouda was a warmly genuine Indian lady of the Victorian era, and from a casting standpoint was a perfect match to Lance Baker's Phileas Fogg. Her understated demeanor played nicely off Baker's minimalist development of Fogg, and her own growing warmth - and eventual mutual love - for Fogg was conveyed in a deftly constrained range. The result of the nuanced interplay between them had the unique effect of intensifying the sensation of their growing love in a way that was so subtle it was remarkable for that reason. The awkward hesitations, the "accidental" brushes of the hands/fingers, the knowing glances all combined to convey an extremely realistic and believable romance smoldering beneath the surfaces of two people whose entire lives had been dictated by rigid structure. Baker and Batista are a casting match of the "Jerry Maguire" magnitude - they complete each other perfectly.

By journey's end, Fogg's transformation is complete, where a twist (which I will not spoil) makes it evident that time is no longer of any consequence to him. When a street person comments to Passepartout that Fogg has come away with nothing because the journey cost him £20,000 and he had bet his gentlemen friends £20,000 that he could complete it in time, Passepartout points out that Fogg has, to the contrary, come away with everything - the mutual love and devotion of a good woman.

The supporting ensemble (Usman Ally, Rom Barkhordar, Patrick New and Ericka Ratcliff) provided generally solid transient characters to round out the story, although some were more believable than others. Patrick New's courtroom judge and Rom Barkhordar's sea captain deserve specific mention; Usman Ally was best initially as Fogg's first valet. Erika Ratcliff was, similar to Kevin Douglas's Passepartout, merely adequate, and I found her doubling as a male Captain Von Darius to be a bit of a stretch. Costumes (Mara Blumenfeld) were exquisite. Scenic Design (Jacqueline and Richard Penrod) was efficient and well-staged, with solid lighting design (Lee Keenan) complementing the effect.

Around the World in 80 Days was a well-balanced reinvention of Verne's classic. Children will enjoy the pure adventure, and adults hopefully will come away with an appreciation for the slower things in life. They certainly will remember the night that they watched a stuffy Englishman soften and fall in love with his demure Indian muse, and the hilarity provided by Inspector Fix balances the evening with just the right amount of light-hearted laughter.

REVIEW
Kansas City Repertory Theatre
Around the World in 80 Days
Adapted from the novel by Jules Verne
Directed by Laura Eason
Runs January 22 to February (reviewed Friday, January 29)
Kansas City Repertory Theatre
4949 Cherry Street, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-235-2700 or online at www.kcrep.org

Cover photo: Rom Barkhordar (guide), Kevin Douglas (Passepartout), Joe Dempsey (Inspector Fix), Ravi Batista (Mrs. Aouda), Lance Baker (Phileas Fogg). Photo by Don Ipock.

By Christopher Guerin

Traditional and New Classical music, and Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Christopher Guerin holds degrees in Music Education, Music Business, and Music Theory & Composition, the latter from the University of Massachusetts (Lowell) College of Music where he co-founded the college's Composers' Guild, and, in 1985, won the Artin Arslanian Composition Award. During college, he also obtained some musical theatre experience as a member of pit orchestras for Threepenny Opera and My Fair Lady. Since 1989, Christopher has been in the very non-artistic corporate sector, where his creative energies have been put to more mundane endeavors 

Christopher credits his musical motivations to his late father, who was concertmaster of the Springfield (MA) Community (pre-cursor to the city's current Symphony) Orchestra and performed popular music on radio in the 1930s. Christopher began his classical training in 1972 at age 10, began teaching at 16 (continuing to take private students throughout college), and traveled extensively with a youth orchestra - including to New Zealand in 1980. After college, and until 1989, Christopher focused on the business end of music as a successful sales manager for one of New England's largest music chains.

Over the past 20 years, Christopher's expertise has focused on medicine as a life risk underwriting officer for a large Midwest insurance group. His past duties included responsibility for risk underwriting in Pacific Rim markets where he traveled extensively to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand and Burma. Time permitting, he has continued to compose intermittently throughout this period. Christopher is married to Paula, a fellow musician he met during college, and together they have "composed" their magnum opera in three very creative children - an architecture student (go K-State!), an aspiring classical pianist, and a budding writer/journalist. He and his wife relocated from Massachusetts to the Kansas City area in 1997.