Around the World in 80 Days at The Dukes, Lancaster – review

The stunning setting of Lancaster’s Williamson Park makes a beautiful – if audience-challenging – backdrop to a promenade production aimed squarely at family audiences throughout the summer. Director Sarah Punshon and designer Amanda Mascarenhas certainly make the most of every scenic and visual opportunity.

The five locations dotted around the park, from the boating lake to the extraordinary cathedral-like folly with its panoramic views, are exploited wonderfully to create impressions of the places Phileas Fogg visits on his Victorian circumnavigation attempt to win a bet. A narrow wooded track with traverse seating on logs is cleverly transformed into a train steaming across the Indian subcontinent; a deep dell doubles for a Grand Canyon-type setting as he crosses America.

The Dukes’ props and wardrobe departments excel themselves too, with some amazing visual effects, costumes and scenery, including a dancing Chinese lion and a sadly underused life-size baby elephant. Combined with impressive lighting and a hard-working on-site crew of technicians, stage management and volunteer stewards, it’s a treat for the eyes and, given the right weather conditions, makes for an evening of spectacle overlooking Morecambe Bay.

Other elements are more troublesome. Jules Verne’s original story has been heavily sanitised for modern audiences, turning Fogg from a dilettante rich boy with criminal tendencies into a thoroughly upstanding butler – Passepartout – who is paid to undertake the wager by his employer, Lady Fogg, posing as her nephew. The amalgamation of Verne’s two characters forces some contortions in Andrew Pollard’s script, which occasionally veers perilously close to stereotyping as the story trundles from India to Hong Kong to America, although diverse casting helps considerably in this regard.

It’s also unnecessarily long, clocking in at well over two-and-a-half hours including the age it takes manoeuvring the audience from one location to another. The changes feel cumbersome and inevitably hinder the pace, while Ziad Jabero’s songs often seem superfluous, accompanied by over-amplified backing tracks.

Sam Jones plays Fogg charmingly as an enthusiastic and wide-eyed hero, accompanied for most of the journey by Aleeza Humranwala’s Indian princess Aouda, who shows off her fine voice in a Bollywood pastiche number about freedom. Heather Phoenix relishes her turn as the villain of the piece, Inspector Fix, who is determined to stop Fogg winning his bet at any cost, and there’s capable support in a variety of roles from Darcy Kim, Angelo Paragoso and Sibylla Meienberg.

In the way of the British weather, it’s advisable to take everything from sun cream to galoshes to cover every eventuality, but as a colourful, cartoonish entertainment for a gentle summer’s evening it offers plenty to enjoy and, even on a cool night, sparks a warm reception from its well-travelled audience.