EVERETT — It’s a laugh-out-loud show that imaginative fourth-grade boys will love, and so will everyone else.
Village Theatre’s hilarious, fast-paced production of “Around the World in 80 Days” opens Friday, March 6, at the Everett Performing Arts Center.
Based Jules Verne’s 150-year-old novel, the comedy by playwright Mark Brown tells the tale of London aristocrat Phileas Fogg, who wagers that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days on a whistle-stop journey by rail, ship and whatever other form of transportation he can find. (Nope, no hot air balloon, which appears only in the movie version of the story.)
As the play program notes, the bet that Phileas Fogg accepts — £2,000 — had the same buying power in the 1870s as about $2 million does today.
So off they go.
Fogg and his French servant, Passepartout, travel from London to Egypt, India, Hong Kong, Japan, San Francisco, New York and back to London.
With problems of all sorts at every turn, however, will Fogg make it back by the deadline?
It’s like a Victorian-era “Amazing Race” against time.
The five actors in the production — who play nearly 40 different characters — are masters of a world of accents and lots of exaggerated physical comedy.
Their slapstick and mime is so well-choreographed that one can’t help but guffaw.
Jared Michael Brown, a veteran Seattle actor, is Fogg, who is equally believable as the calm, smart businessman as he is an oblivious bachelor.
Aneesh Sheth plays Auda, a beautiful Indian woman who Fogg rescues from death. The talented Sheth has appeared on Broadway, TV and in film, and more recently at the 5th Avenue.
Village audiences will remember Eric Polani Jensen as the amazing Javert in last year’s production of “Les Miserables.” This time around, Jensen plays another law man, the funny and tenacious Detective Fix.
Jason Collins, whose credits are many, is the cast member who best plays all the different characters he is assigned, too many to list, but all hilarious and believable. His quick costume changes were notable.
The man who steals the show, however is Chris Ensweiler as Passepartout, whose name roughly means master key.
As the small Frenchman, Ensweiler is a great comic actor, especially in the opium den scene.
A quick note about the set: Not enough good can be said of Village Theatre’s scenic, lighting, costume and sound designers and the stage management crew. A stage floor turntable painted with a compass rose was put to great use, and all the movable set pieces were outstanding.
“Around the World in 80 Days,” directed by David Ira Goldstein, is Village’s one non-musical offering of the season and it’s well-worth a belly sore from laughing.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
If you go
Village Theatre’s “Around the World in 80 Days” plays March 6 through 29 at the Everett Performing Arts Center, 2710 Wetmore Ave., Everett. Tickets, $30 to $62, are available by calling 425-257-8600 or at www.villagetheatre.org.
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