Playwright: adapted by John Hildreth from the novel by Jules Verne
At: Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood
Phone: ( 773 ) 761-4477; $20
Runs through: Dec. 1
Oh, those Victorian gentlemen! Have they nothing to do but play low-stake whist at their clubs and propose high-stake wagers with one another.? Take Phileas Fogg, for example: a reclusive bachelor, orderly to obsession, who accepts a challenge to circumnavigate the globe in a mere 80 days by means of the most up-to-date technology available in 1872, assisted only by a wad of pound-notes--20 thousand, to be precise, as Fogg is always precise--and the resourceful talents of his French valet Passepartout ( "Master-Key" ) ,
Once embarked on this tour, they will travel by train, steamship ( one of them hijacked ) , wind-driven sled and elephant. Their adventures along the way will include touchy encounters with vindictive Hindu priests, defective engines, missing railroad tracks, an opium den in Singapore, a political brawl in San Francisco, hostile American Indians, slow-moving herds of buffalo, a high-speed locomotive ride over a washed-out bridge, the interception of an ocean liner in the midst of a typhoon, and the rescue of a Parsee widow from a funeral pyre ( none of this "respect for indigenous religions" nonsense when the local custom involves burning young ladies alive ) . Further impeding their progress is Detective Fix of Scotland Yard, who pursues Fogg in the mistaken belief that the latter is the bank-robber wanted by the London police.
More amazing than all these events, however, is that Lifeline Theatre replicates it all on a stage measuring a mere 28 X 30 feet in under two hours of John Hildreth's wittily efficient adaptation of Jules Verne's prototypal science-fiction novel. None of this would be possible without Dorothy Milne's agile direction and a sure-footed cast led by Peter Greenberg, whose unwavering aplomb is the perfect foil to Robert Kauzlaric's mercurial Passepartout and Reid Ostrowski's blustery Inspector Fix, along with an ensemble of six multiethnic actors playing assorted Englishmen, Orientals and Yankees of ranks and occupations ( and dialects, courtesy of Anne Wakefield ) too numerous to tally.
Scenic designer Alan Donahue has fashioned a pop-up puzzle replete with wheels and sprockets converting to ingenious props that facilitate the lightning scene-changes necessary to move the show at its breathless clip.
