Puppetry (under Naomi Oppenheim) adds atmosphere – the elephant on which Fogg rescues Mrs Aouda from certain death is captivating. Games of visual synecdoche prompt the audience to imagine a whole from a well-chosen part (a life ring attached to a section of railing conjures a ship a wooden chair with luggage rack, a train). These are created, in typical physical theatre style, through clever combinations of actor movement (under Jess Williams’s direction) and manipulation of a minimal set (designed by Louie Whitemore, lit by Chuma Emembolu). The first half transports us from Europe, across Asia, via a sequence of stage pictures. Not like now, she mused, when we are struggling not to be expelled from the Commonwealth. Jules Verne, made sure that he was famous during the times when Britain was quite Great. However, in spite of the chivvying effect of a metronome-governed soundtrack (Benjamin Hudson and Anna Wheatley), this new production from Hull Truck Theatre and Theatre By the Lake, directed by Hal Chambers, sets off at pace rather more stately than hasty. She intended to whisk around the world in 80 days, just like her granddad did Phileas Fogg, whose biographer, Mr. Accompanied by his valet, Passepartout, Fogg sets off to prove his point. “Impossible!” cry the cronies at his club. Phileas Fogg, a gentleman of clockwork-precise habits, wagers his fortune that he will journey around the world in 80 days. T he plot of Jules Verne’s 1872 novel is well known.
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