Review: Around The World In 80 Days, Leeds Playhouse community tour

AFTER a breathless run at the Playhouse Pop-Up theatre, Around The World In 80 Days is going around Leeds in 11 days from Wednesday. This will be fifth such Playhouse community tour, touring nine venues with full details to be found at leedsplayhouse.org.uk.

Around The World is the last but one show for the Playhouse's Pop-Up repertory company, forming the finale for the four men in the ensemble; the four women will see out the season in Amanda Whittington's Be My Baby from May 11.

The joy of the old-fashioned repertory format is how you grow familiar with the players, seeing their skills in differing plays and roles and appreciating their talents all the more. In this case, Jules Verne's 1872 globe-trotting adventure across ten countries is conducted more like a globe-gallop in Toby Hulse's adaptation, briskly whisked by director Alexander Ferris, as the quartet reels off 30 characters.

In the convivial company of Robert Pickavance's Mr Phileas Fogg, Joe Alessi's Passepartout, Darren Kuppan's Fix Of The Yard and Dan Parr's desperately-keen-to-interfere Jules Verne, the fourth wall is broken down quickly for a show of metatheatre where we are all in it together to ensure Fogg pulls off his seemingly impossible task.

Around Pickavance's insouciant Fogg, his fellow cast members multi-task at breakneck pace on Amanda Stoodley's playground set, whether Parr interjecting, Alessi playing off the audience wonderfully or Kuppan displaying nimble gymnastic physicality, all aided by quick costume changes (and fabulous Stoodley attire).

Ferris has sought to evoke the spirit of Morecambe & Wise; Buster Keaton, music hall and Indiana Jones; his delightful show does all that but emerges triumphant in its own right too.