With ships steaming through the Suez Canal and railroads laid from coast to coast in America and across the Indian subcontinent, the dream of rapid global travel moved several steps closer to reality.
Indeed, in 1872, the ever-enterprising Thomas Cook set up the first round-the-world holiday tour, which took seven months.
Although the subsequent account came too late to influence the writing of Jules Verne’s classic novel, the author claimed it was seeing an advert for the Cook trip that gave him the germ of his plot.
Verne may be popularly known as the father of science fiction but there is nothing futuristic about Around the World In Eighty Days.
On the contrary, the story of laconic adventurer Phileas Fogg and his £20,000 wager to traverse the globe in record time is a classic tale of British imperial derring-do that ranks alongside those of Kipling and RiderHaggard.
Only Fogg’s valet, Passepartout, betrays the author’s Gallic origins. Despite the difficulties of dramatising a novel with 125 characters, eight countries, six trains, five boats, four fights, a circus, a herd of buffalo and an elephant, it has spawned countless stage adaptations.
The first, by Verne himself with Adolphe d’Ennery, opened in Paris in 1874, a year after the book’s publication.
The most recent, by Laura Eason, played at London’s St James Theatre over Christmas 2015. Surely the most intriguing was the 1946 Broadway musical directed by Orson Welles with a score by Cole Porter. According to one unimpressed critic it had “everything but the kitchen sink”.
The following night, Welles duly arranged for a kitchen sink to be brought on stage during his curtain call. Directing this touring version, Theresa Hoskins lacks Welles’ resources, but she and designer Lis Evans have come up with an inventive staging solution, which is to utilise an ever-changing pile of luggage.
This is not only an economical and versatile means of realising the picaresque plot but it creates a powerful visual metaphor for Fogg and Passepartout’s journey.
With that journey’s outcome never in doubt, this is definitely a case where to travel imaginatively is more fun than to arrive. And with their deft visual effects, ranging from an elephant conjured from a bale of cloth, through miraculously flying banknotes, to Japanese acrobats channelling Michael Jackson, Hoskins and her protean cast don’t miss a trick.
Andrew Pollard makes a splendidly poker-backed Fogg, undaunted by any challenge except facing his own emotions when he falls for an Indian widow whom he rescues from committing suttee.
Kirsten Foster endows her with a waggish charm, not least when delivering an anti-imperialist message not found in Verne.
Dennis Herdman is the picture of exasperated officialdom as Fogg’s nemesis, Inspector Fix. But, as ever, the show is stolen by Passepartout.
Whether walking on his hands, strumming a ukulele, improvising a lyric on an audience member’s name or waking from an opium-induced stupor, Michael Hugo is sparkling and spry.
Around the World In Eighty Days – Cadogan Hall, London SW1
(Touring nationwide from September 12, details at 80dayslive.com)