When Agata Sokolska is asked to talk about the characters (yes, that’s plural) that she plays in City Repertory Theatre’s upcoming production, her opening salvo is: “Bleeeaaaattttt!”
There’s no better description of this particular character, given that it’s an elephant, and the play in question is Mark Brown’s 2001 adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1872 adventure novel, Around the World in 80 Days. City Rep’s version opens Friday (Nov. 14) and runs through Nov. 23 at the community theater’s black box venue in Palm Coast’s City Marketplace.
“I have to play an elephant in one scene and a femme fatale in almost the very next moment, as well as a journalist,” says Sokolska, a Palm Coast actor and City Rep veteran.
No, CRT isn’t being forced to make do with a depleted talent pool of area thespians, thus forcing its “80 Days” cast to take on multiple roles. Rather, Brown conceived his slapstick-infused play and its 39 characters to be performed by just five actors – which makes him a sadist on par with Alfred Hitchcock’s notorious comment that “All actors are cattle” and should be treated accordingly.
Or perhaps Brown is a practical sadist.
“I wanted to keep the cast to five actors,” the playwright says on his website. “I thought that was a good number. It’s hell trying to get something produced with more than five actors.”
The play follows Phileas Fogg, a Victorian-era Londoner played by Cameron Hodges, who bets the fellow members of his gentlemen’s club that he can travel around the world in 80 days.
And so Fogg and his valet Passepartout, played by Danno Waddell, set out to circle the globe, but they’re pursued by a Scotland Yard policeman, Detective Fix, played by Beau Wade, who believes Fogg committed a robbery. Their journey scampers from London to Suez, India, China, the American West, Chicago, New York and back to London.
“The show has been a huge hit for me,” Brown says. “Bigger than anything I could have ever imagined. It’s been produced Off-Broadway twice, all across the US, Canada, England, South Africa, Turkey, India and Bangladesh – it’s even been produced in the Himalayas. Crazy. I never ever thought it would see the light of day, let alone be produced all over the world.”
That tally now includes two productions at City Rep. For its current season, CRT is celebrating its 15th anniversary with an eight-play schedule that includes seven reprises of past shows. The troupe first staged “80 Days” in February 2021 – past the peak of the Covid pandemic – at the outdoor, tented, socially distanced pavilion of the now-defunct Palm Coast Arts Foundation.
Astute local theater-goers will note that the venue change for this “80 Days” – from the relatively expansive PCAF pavilion to City Rep’s black box home base – will result in a decidedly different production.
When CRT director John Sbordone says of his theater’s current space that “Boy, is it cozy,” the implication is that the black box venue is especially cozy for this particular play.
While Brown wryly observes that “there’s no balloon” in his adaptation of Verne’s classic, his play does feature that elephant, a horse, runaway locomotives, a typhoon and those 39 characters.
“We have three different trains on this voyage – it was so hard getting that locomotive backstage,” Sbordone deadpans. “It barely fit in the elevator. There’s no room for the costume changes, frankly.”
Hodges is the odd man out in the cast, given that he portrays only one role: the protagonist Phileas Fogg.
“Phileas is precision personified,” says Hodges, who portrayed Salvador Dali in CRT’s 2024 production of “Hysteria.” “He needs to have everything to a precise measurement. Even his shaving water needs to be 86 degrees.”
Hodges’s favorite Fogg adventures include “going on the rails of America, jumping over bridges, burning a ship in order to keep the smoke up to make it across the sea, and rescuing Aouda from a suttee where they’re about to burn her alive on her husband’s funeral pyre.”
Whew! Clearly, Indiana Jones has nothing on Fogg (who, by the way, was portrayed by David Niven in the 1956 American film version, which won the Oscar for Best Picture. Unlike Verne’s novel and Brown’s adaptation, the Niven flick did feature a balloon.)
Waddell, who is reprising his role as Passepartout from the 2021 CRT show, will play one other role. Sokolska has three.
“I think I have 10 roles,” says Wade, including Detective Fix, his main part. Wade’s use of the phrase “I think” is telling: Some of the roles, he notes, are really “quick” and may not qualify as a role at all – a very short scene here, a few lines there, and it’s off to the next character.
“I play an Indian train conductor and a US train conductor in America, as well,” Wade says. “I also play Andrew Stewart, a member of the Reform Club – a hoity-toity British man who does not believe at all in Phileas Fogg.”
The Oscar for Most Roles in a CRT Production of a Jules Verne Adaptation goes to Khloe Perez-Mathis, who moved to South Daytona from Colorado Springs four years ago, and made her CRT debut with this season’s opening production of “Avenue Q.”
“I play 17 different characters, one of them non-speaking,” Perez-Mathis says. “In some scenes I walk off stage and immediately return as a different character, likely with a different hat. I do about 14 different accents. That’s been the funnest challenge for me so far – having to switch between accents.”
As she adopts a Russian accent, she says, “We discover the Russian accent is more funny than Irish accent (switches to Irish). I tried to do the Irish and we did it for a bit but (switches back to Russian) John think Russian funny.” I do (switches to English) an English accent at the very beginning and at the very end. I make a kind of nasally sound, as if he just looks down at everybody from the tip of his pointy British nose.”
“Slapstick is every bit as difficult as straight drama, but in a different way,” Sbordone says. He mentions that Perez-Mathis played one of the Bad Idea Bears in CRT’s “Avenue Q,” and when actor Ben Beck became sick, she stepped into the role of Trekkie Monster as well.
“I saw how versatile she could be, and so this play was a natural for her,” Sbordone says.
Additionally, April Whaley will create the play’s sound effects “except for the elephant and the horse,” she says. In a bit of breaking the metaphorical “fourth wall” between audience and performers, she notes that “You’ll see me sitting on stage.”
Lest one think her sound effects role calls for rote rapping and tapping, she adds with a chuckle: “John asked for Indian sounds, and we still haven’t figured out what he means by that.”
Waddell says that “Around the World in 80 Days” “is just fun. The comedy is non-stop, and it’s got a little bit of love story there, too. It’s like those old comedies, like the Pink Panther movies and all that stuff. It’s straight comedy, but you’ve got adventure, you’ve got love, you’ve got action all piled in there. It’s just a feel-good time all around.”
City Repertory Theatre will stage “Around the World in 80 Days” at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 14-15 and Nov. 21-22, and at 3 p.m. Nov. 16 and 23. Shows on Nov. 15, 16 and 23 are sold out.
Performances will be in CRT’s black box theater at City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B207, Palm Coast. Tickets are $25 adults and $15 students, available online at crtpalmcoast.com or by calling 386-585-9415. Tickets also will be available at the venue just before curtain time.
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