A big plus point in going outdoors to stage Jules Verne’s escapade is you have room aplenty to tether a hot-air balloon. The one that appears here, in the final leg of the global journey of Phileas Fogg, is a plump patchwork of primary colours, looking radiant against a backdrop of trees, hills and a river. It joins an inflatable sphinx and a blow-up elephant on the lawn outside the theatre.
Oddly, our intrepid explorers – Richard Colvin’s Fogg, joined by Blythe Jandoo’s tomboy Jean disguised as Passepartout and Nalân Burgess’s emancipated princess Aouda – make no attempt to travel in the balloon. Rather, they stand nearby, singing a musical-style song. They imply their journey instead of enacting it.
