Around The World In 80 Days offers "sheer theatrical delight" on the Eastbourne stage

Around The World In 80 Days, Devonshire Park Theatre, until August 5-27

Take a break in Eastbourne – and we’ll throw in a trip around the world. The title of Jules Verne’s celebrated novel reckons on 80 days, but at the Devonshire Park Theatre, they will get you there and back in a couple of glorious hours.

This year’s summer season production of Round the World in 80 Days is sheer theatrical delight.

August is, if not the cruellest month, certainly the trickiest for theatre management. How to entice the patrons in from the promenade? But with a production like this, it really shouldn’t be the slightest problem. Enjoy that blazing sunshine, by all means, and then round off your day with this flight of fantasy.

It’s exactly as the Eastbourne Theatres website preview promises: 104 characters, seven actors, six trains, six boats, four fights, two dances, one sleigh ride, a storm, a circus, a balloon, and an elephant ... Actually we were all far too absorbed in the action to verify the 104, but those seven actors give all for their art, and the production is as frantic as it is triumphant. Physical theatre at high octane.

Ah, physical theatre. It used to be a novelty: those frantically inventive productions of The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre, and the National Theatre's The Curious Incident. But it has set new parameters for live theatre productions. Actors now switch roles with a change of hat and scarf. A couple of luggage trunks become a railway carriage. And everything happens at pace.

For the performers it may be breathless, but for the audience it is simply brilliant entertainment. A show like this does not happen by accident, though. Director Chris Jordan and his company of seven actors must have worked tirelessly in rehearsal to create a production that brims with invention, energy, perfect timing and irresistible humour. Either that, or they’re on intravenous adrenalin.

You will almost certainly know the plot, although if you had forgotten the final twist, we certainly will not spoil it here. Philias Fogg accepts the daunting challenge, and extremely large wager, of circumnavigation and return (to his elegant dining club) in exactly eighty days. It is old-fashioned, but in the nicest sense. The tongue is always in the cheek, and it’s a reminder that – without getting too dangerously political – that wit can often work better than woke.

Amid so much frantic stagecraft, some genuinely fine characterisations still shine through. Nicholas Maude’s Phileas Fogg is bold, confident, never without a knowing smile, and very slightly aloof as the Victorian Brit whose Queen rules half of the globe. Ben Cutler is his irrepressible, resilient and engaging manservant Passepartout. Ben Roddy – one of the Devonshire Park’s favourite sons – has huge scope for comedy in his hapless Inspector Fix, and he doesn’t miss a trick.

Fogg’s lady travelling companion Mrs Aouda draws a wonderful performance from Freny Nina Pavri – the whole spectrum from witty and wryly perceptive, to fearful and touchingly vulnerable at moments of peril. That performance is beautifully judged acting, and indeed this production is much more than slapstick.

The other three actors deliver performances far beyond the “supporting cast” level. Versatility, energy, and accomplished characterisations – even when the character emerges and disappears again within a minute and a half. They have their own specialism, too: Hannah Boyce with a mesmerising Scottish ballad that stills the whole theatre. Harry Hart leading a stomping sea shanty. James Cooney with a mastery of accents.

The first half of the show takes our hero from London to India, with his nemesis Inspector Fix in lurking pursuit. And Fogg is just about on schedule – but it’s no wonder the voyage then falls behind, for Act Two opens with a twenty-minute feast. Ben Roddy’s hilarious ad-lib entr’acte leads us into some of the most stunning and dazzling sequences that you will see in any theatre, any show. And from then on, the expedition gathers gripping pace. A railroad ambush out on the Great Plains of America, an Atlantic crossing with the maddest sea captain afloat, and a breathless dash to Fogg’s London club. Has he beaten the deadline? Grab a ticket and find out…

Reservations? None, really. The latter part of Act One loses a tiny bit of pace and seems to spend a while lost in India. Oh, and the calendar at stage right, tracking the voyage, is a clever idea – but at the performance this reviewer watched, I am sure it was stuck on Tuesday December 3rd when it should have moved on to Friday 6th. How petty can reviewers get?

All the technical aspects, in fact, are terrific. The show is immaculately dressed and stunningly lit, from all angles, and designer Julie Godfrey’s endlessly imaginative ideas are carried through beautifully. This is no August schedule filler, no weary end-of-pier show. It is the best piece of theatre that the Devonshire Park has staged since the Wretched Lockdown.

Ladies and gentlemen, the boat train to Calais – via the Devonshire Park, Eastbourne – departs daily until Saturday 27th August. Miss the boat, and you’ll miss an absolute treat.