The Deep Blue sea by Terence Rattigan

THE DEEP BLUE SEA Isa straightforward tale about a middle aged women, separated from her judge husband, who alls in love with Freddy, a much younger and feckless pilot.  The story begins with Hester (the woman) trying to kill herself but doing it deliberately badl, so as to be successfully discovered.  The Ensuing action shows her finally splitting up with Freddy, but learning to step out on her own.

The play has echoes of THR BROWNIING VERSION in its depiction of a relationship soured over time, but deals with it in far bolder fashion.  in AnatoleLitvak’s 156 film she is played by Vivien Leigh, who experienced similar emotions when she fell in love with Australian actor Peter Finch while still marred to Laurence Olivier. She is completely head over heels in love, but realises that is not enough at the end of the play. Freddie is a good sort, but much happier in male Company where he cN play the part of a slightly perplexed duffer.  He is no good at handling Hester’s emotions.

• Hester is almost broken in pieces at the beginning, but recovers with the help of .  Kindly doctor Felix Aylmer.  Hester’s condition is not as bad as she claims: we observe her love of an audience to perform in front of. There is something about Leigh’s performance that remains strangely unattractive, as if she is continually in search of an audience because she lacks the courage of her convictions.

• Or maybe the desire to perform stems from the environment.  Litvak has opened up the play a bit, and set it in the seedier parts of Chelsea. Her room has the atmosphere of gentle seediness, with cheap furniture adorning her pearls.  Presided over by a nosey yet kindly landlady (Dandy Nichols), the room anticipates ROOM AT THE TOP, the kind of place that’s more suitable for rebellion than faded gentility .  Hester has obviously fallen upon hard times, but does not want to admit it, especially to strangers, especially men. Hence her need to perform, even while ostensibly ending her life.

• Freddy Page is played by Kenneth More. He is a feckless soul, preferring to drown his sorrows in alcohol rather than face up to responsibilities. His decision to leave Hester and work in South America is entirely provoked by the desire to escape from a world he can’t handle. He likes the sex, but cannot take the other responsibilities. In the end we understand his departure is a good thing for Hester, despite her desire to kill herself once more.
• In the end Hester, albeit snuffling profusely, comes to an understanding of herself and what she wants. Her husband offers her a life of affluence and no responsibility; she can flit about at home, go to parties, and enjoy the social advantages of going to parties. Or she can stay in her seedy bedsit and carve out a new life on her own, in spite of the potential hazards involved. Litvak emphasises the difficulties of the decision. The Judge is played by Emlyn Williams, a safe, reassuring presence with bags of money and status. Yet for this Hester this way of life is sexless, and hence devoid of fun. She might be middle_aged, but that does not preclude her from a promiscuous life if she should desire it.  She does not want the conventional life of a mid_50s woman, but seeks to flout convention and branch out on her own.
• For modern women, the choice can be roughly similar.  Either consign yourself to an assigned role or branch out on your own.  You might not be as beautiful as Vivien Leigh, but you still have that spirit of discovery that can encourage you to do anything.
• Litvak’s decision to open out the piece in central London makes it more of a period-piece: the emphasis here focuses on women of the mid-50s experiencing the same crises that the Angry Young Men experienced a couple of years later.  But Rattigan’s statements about the position of women and how men treat them are still very applicable today, especially at a time of the Female First movement, when so many women are making public statements about their treatment in public.

SEPARATE TABLES - THE MOVIE (1958)

SEPARATE TABLES. - THE MGM VERSION

Released as long ago as 1958, SEPARATE TABLES was one of Burt Lancaster’s respectable efforts.  With the help of his earnings from major studios, he set up a production company with producer Harold Hecht, dedicated to producing mood- or lower-budget material containing a raft of stars.

SEPARATE TABLES is a good example.  It has already been produced with notable success in the West End of London and on Broadway, and for the film version Lancaster hired four stars to dream of - himself and Rita Hayworth for the companion-piece and Dav;d Niven and Deborah Kerr for TABLE NUMBER SEVEN.  The supporting cast for both plsys in their film lncluded Gladys Cooper , Felix Aylmer and Claire Bloom.  Two of the major stars were American, the other two were US-based.  The support cast comprised a mixture of British imports and British expats in the US.

Filming was done in Hollywood on a nondescript setting that had all Tighe jewselry and Knick-knacks characteristic;c of a British hotel, but had the space of its American counterpart.  This gave Delbert Mann the chance to integrate the action of the two playas, while giving each a separate room to continue their discussions in.

The most noteworthy aspect of the production is that Niven and Kerr are cast against type in their roles.  As the Major, Niven cultivates a pleasant, affable personality, wishing all the guests good day while telling anyone who would listen about his public school and army officer career. The only trouble is that ever piece of information is false: the Major is not a major at all, but a corporal who worked in the NAAFI close to home rather than fighting out in North Africa as he claims.    The bonhomie that we normally associate with Niven’s characters in movies is false: in truth (as he admits to Sibyl) he has no confidence in himself at all.

Sibylle has similar problems: continually dominated by her mother (Gladys Cooper) she sits meekly in the corner while her mother pontificates as her mother pronounced on everything and expects nothing but agreement from Sibyl.  As someone recovering from a nervous breakdown, Sibyl lacks any power of resistance.  In one argumentative sequence she rushes out of the living-room to lie down on her own.  Kerr plays Sibyl as a girl of minimal speech, who keeps looking down at her hands.  Sometimes she plays with a handkerchief, but doesn’t want anyone to see what she is doing.

At last she and the major contrive to find some time away from the rest of the group, and we learn the real reason for the major’s eccentric behaviour.  It turns out he has an unsuppressed desire to interfere with young women in the cinema, and has been taken to court and fined as a result.  Mindful of the effect such news would have on his reputation, the Major cultivates an aggressively masculine mode of conversation, while doing his best to ensure that Mrs. Ailton-Bell, Sibyl’s mother, doesn’t get to read it.  Yet all this subterfuge turns to nothing: the residents find out about the Major’s calumny and ostracise him.  His scene alone with Sibyl is perhaps the last chance he will have to tell the truth about himself.

Niven was never an emotional actor: on the contrary he played characters with stiff upper lips who tried their best to conceal their feelings from others.  Faced with an entirely opposite role here, he copes brilliantly with the situation, starting off with a smile, as usual, but ending up in tears in public, perhaps for the first time.  He knows what’s wrong, but admits to such shyness that he cannot think of treating women compassionately.  He likes women, but cannot get along with them.  For the first time in the drama Niven appears disheveled, his immaculately pressed jacket awry, his tie hanging down limply - just like the lower middle-class person he actually is.

We know Niven has done wrong, but at the same time realize just how much mental pain he has undergone as a result of his mental infirmity.  He is to be listened to, and helped out of his condition rather than rejected.  But Sibyl seems entirely the wrong person to listen to his complaints - sat mousily in the most anonymous looking chair, she doesn’t even look at him, almost as if the material were too X-rated for her innocent ears.  But Lancaster - as director - proves us wrong: as Niven continues, Sibyl understands the Major’s need for emotional support, even if it is only in the form of a sympathetic voice.  The two look one another in the eye for a few moments in a significant gesture: it’s the first time in the entire film they have connected in this way.  We listen to them talking: the majority of the conversation is unimportant, but the fact they are exchanging views is highly significant.

Yet the Major still believes that he has to leave the hotel for good, despite the owner’s (Claire Bloom’s) blandishments.  We observing him walking on his own slowly up the stairs to his miserable room, packing his few belongings into his suitcase and taking it downstairs.  He enters the breakfast-room alone, with the other guests sitting in silence, munching their way through tea, toast, eggs and bacon.  The waitress, in a tone of enforced jollity, orders the Major’s breakfast and leaves.

There is a further pause — and then one by one the guests take it in turns to speak to the Major.  The subjects are banal - the local racing tips, Sussex doing well at cricket, the possibility of going for a walk in the afternoon — but the context means everything, showing that they are prepared to forgive the Major snd let him stay, if he should so wish.  Incensed, Mrs. RAilton-Brown gets up from the table and prepares to leave the room, ordering Sibyl to go with her immediately.   But Sibyl refuses, preferring to finish her breakfast instead. Her first active decision to rebel is a significant one, proving that she has no particular dislike of the Major, despite his past.  The owner comes in at al electric moment, with everyone fearing what will happen next.  She defuses the situation by going directly up to the Major and speaking to him, much to Mrs. Railton-Bell’s displeasure.   All Mrs Railton-Bell can do is got storm out and go to her room, alone and defeated.

The room returns to its tranquil calm, with the Major continuing to eat and his fellow-guests continuing not to talk much to one another, but obviously happy in one another’s company, especially now Mrs. Railton-Bell has disappeared. 

Nothing much happens in TABLE NUMBER SEVEN, except for the two male protagonists disclosing their various pasts.  But that’s the basic point: no one can escape their pasts, and the way to deal with them is to confront them, however unsavoury they might be.  By doing so the Major learns the virtues of truth rather than simply trying to cover things up: it may not be much, but he has shown great character in telling Sibyl everything.  Like Niven himself, he has shown tremendous the bravery in doing something he had not done before to the best of his ability, and discovered that no one really worries about it.  On the contrary they admire him for his pluck.

The play has to do with emotional discovery, while suggesting that it’s not just the Major and Sibyl suffering from emotional inadequacies, but most of the residents as well.  It’s just how you deal with them, that’s all.

THE BROWNING VERSION (BBC PLAY OF THE MONTH 1985)

Available now on BBC Video, this version was first broadcast in a series that brought the world’s best theatrical material to the screen each month, in studio-bound productions with the focus on characterisation and theme.  Rattigan was a popular choice for production, chiefly because his plays were quite recent (in the pantheon oi great drama, that is), and because his style of writing worked extremely well for their intimidate television camera and the use of videotape, which was the standard form of BBC shooting for the mid-80s.

Starring Judi Dench and Ian Holm, as the Crocker-Harris’s, the episode focused on the contrasts in behaviour of the two in a society dedicated to politeness and respectability.  Truth came at a terrible premium, and was often consciously avoided by staff members wanting to protect their pensions.  This is a theme that extends beyond the play’s limited social milieu of a minor boys’ public school in the late 40s, a time when much of Britain still looked back to pre-war attitudes, despite the radical social changes taking place in the Forties.  This is what the production stresses in its decor, a melange of dusty books, previous year’s exam papers, and reports.  The cramped staff conditions allow perhaps twenty per cent of its members to sit, while the rest have to stand.  Crocker-Harris’s (Holm’s) study is a dusty room where the windows are either blocked or so caked with dust that no new light enters inside.  The room is dominated by an ancient desk piled high with papers and an armchair where Crocker-Harris occasionally uses for moments of reflection. The whole scene looks tired, listless and in the need of a good lick of paint.

Yet it will never receive anything so radical, not while the current Headmaster (John Woodvine) is in post.  A superficial man whose main aim seems to be to cultivate an atmosphere of enforced efficiency, especially on public occasions such as Speech Day, he loathes Crocker-Harris for his listlessness and wants him out as soon as possible, even if it means denying him a pension.  Of course, the Head never says anything directly for fear of destroying the atmosphere of false bonhomie, especially on speech days.  Rather he has a way of dressing up bad news as not his responsibility, as if he is conveying it on others’ behalf while he remains impartial.

Crocker-Harris has peopled this environment for the past two decades.  As portrayed by Holm, he cultivates an outlook of extreme reserve, not revealing anything of himself to anyone.  This is the result of a career spent in an environment where survival depends on such traits, even if Crocker-Harris has been emotionally destroyed as a result.  The production makes much of his abilities when he came to the schnozzola - a brilliant classical scholar with a glittering future academically.  But the environment destroys him: he loses that hunger that drives good academics onwards and soon realises he is not cut out for teaching.  Crocker-Harris talks bitterly about his feelings in a conversation with Frank Hunter (Michael Kitchen), a younger colleagues who strenuously tries to befriend Crocker-Harris yet finds advances perpetually rebuffed.

The basic scenario suggests how in s school environment adaptation can soon become impossible, especially for someone whose personal convictions evaporated years ago.  It’s not that Holm’z Crocker-Harris is a bad teacher, or a bad person; but his mind has become so fouled up with inertia that he can neither relate to other people not modify his teaching style.  His is the fate of anyone not believing how self-development occurs because individuals want it to, and with the help of others around them.  Rather he remains suspicious of everyone (whom he believes either ignores him completely or laughs at him behind a facade of respectability).  The only protection is for Crocker-Harris to look and say nothing, even if that strategy alienates Holm further from his colleagues and learners.

Yet Crocker-Harris’s problems are exacerbated by a marriage to Dench’s Millie. She is a complex character, at once pitiable yet thoroughly deserving of what happens to her.  Superficially she maintains a respectable public image as a dutiful schoolmaster’s wife, attending all the right parties and agreeing with everything the Head says.  Yet behind that lies a deeply disappointed women, who has had extramarital love-affairs yet cannot experience any satisfaction from them.  Once Hunter learns how horrible she has been to her husband, he refuses to have anything to do with her.

The climactic moment between husband and wife occurs when Millie discovers that the boy Taplow has bought a going-away present for Crocker-Harris.  Beneath a look of pure hatred, she informs her husband that this has nothing to.do with the learner being fond of his teacher, but a strategy designed to cull favour from the teacher and ensure that the student gets his graces.  According to the logic of this production, this is the moment we understand how a lack of adaptation turns individuals into cruel beasts, offering explanations far from the truth but designed to humiliate their loved ones.  No one can really stoop lower.

Yet Rattigan has not finished yet.  Holm’s Crocker-Harris half-believes what his wife says, but for the first time in years he hits back.  Vowing never to put his wife through emotional hell any more, he spurns her company in the forthcoming vacation and resolves never to visit her parents in Bradford any more.  He does not know what he will do instead: maybe he will visit Frank Hunter instead —- alone.  Holm’s expression does not change, but we understand how he has adapted himself to find an alternative mode of existence.

The production ends on a note of cautious optimism.  He rings the Head and insists on his inalienable right to end the sequence of speeches, not to accept the Head’s demand that Crocker-Harris goes next-to-last.  This may sound unimportant, but Holm’s Crocket-Harris has for the first time willingly defied orders and asserted his own view instead.  As he moves away from the phone, he sighs a little then picks up the book Taplow bought him - a symbol of independence,  as well as a reminder that, contrary to what he had assumed, some learners did appreciate his way of teaching.

The production is very much a period-piece, the product of an era when Britain was dominated by pre-war attitudes.  But that context is only used to reinforce Rattigan’s concern that people should learn to adapt through life so as to remain happy, and listen to others.  No one is as badly disposed as Millie Crocker-Harris, even though in a world dedicated to surfaces they might be reluctant to share their emotions.

Rattigan and Human Adaptation: The Browning Version

Terence Rattigan”s career reached it peak in the Forties and Fifties, when he had an apparently endless string of hits including THE WINSLOW BOY, THE BROWNING VERSION and WHO IS SYLVIA?  Then, so theatrical mythology informs us, he dropped out  of the theatrical firmament in favour of the so-0called “Angry Young Men” spearheaded by Jimmy Porter and Arthur Seaton (of SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING inflame).

The only snag with that story is that it is hogwash. Rattigan was very much in vogue throughout the Fifties and has remained so ever since. His subjects might seem a little archaic to us, but his characterisations remain as fresh and exciting as they were seventy years ago. Rattigan has the gift of insight into a particular type of character who still dominates the professions, as well as understanding the effect he exerts on people of all classes and ages. In this piece, I want to explore this character in detail, drawing on some personal experiences as well as examples from Rattigan’s work.

I was educated at an English public school.  Apart from a good basic education, the element I remember most is the proliferation of single men, or unhappily married men that dominated the staff.  They were not precisely unhappy, but they certainly were not happy in themselves.  One was much more adept with an astronomical telescope than he was at teaching geography, while another had a longing to do drama rather than teach plays for exams.  Even as a teenager, I got the sense that these men had been forced by circumstances to teach, even though they did not like the vocation that much.  Don’t get me wrong; they were fond of the boys but could not abide the subjects they were teaching.  There were some who could be described as “perverted” with unnatural feelings towards young boys, but they were well known and avoided.  No: the more intriguing were the heterosexual men with no aptitude for their chosen profession, other than getting boys through the exams.

Arthur Crocker-Harris is a similar kind of personality (in THE BROWNING YERSION). A brilliant classical scholar in his youth, he began his career full of aspirations to write as well as produce exciting versions of AGAMEMNON. But the dreams came to nothing, and he has passed the time teaching the syllabus while never being able to connect with his students or his fellow-staff members.

His basic shortcoming is an inability to understand that teaching is a complex art that involves person skills: the ability to listen to as well as respond to others.  This is a problem shared by many Dulwich staff of the past , when I was there especially.  The causes are institutional as well as personal.  Schools are so obsessed with exams that they often neglect the social aspects of education: the ability to stimulate learners in whatever direction they choose.  This is partly due to ignorance, partly fear: give a learner too much freedom and they will challenge your authority.

So Crocker-Harris digs his own grave for himself.  Neither able to change his style nor practice inter relating better with the students, he stays where he is. When we encounter him, he is on his last day at the school, reflecting bitterly on a wasted life. In 1948, when the play premiered, this was a.hot topic, as many people felt that the spirit of newness prevailing since the end of World War 2 had passed them by.  There might be a Welfare State and a new National Health Service, but such legislation had little or no effect.  These men were part of an older generation for whom life had passed them by. They just struggled on doing the same thing year after year and hopefully with a minimal pension to look forward to at the end of one’s life.  Cricket-Harris doesn’t even have this consolation: forced by illness to retire early, the school governors have decided not to award him a pension, despite years seesseof devoted service.

For the bulk of the play, we are asked to sympathise with Crocker-Harris, with the knowledge that personal inadequacy dug the grave he finds himself in. He could have made more effort, we think.  When I was at school, I used to think this about frustrated teachers: why didn’t they have sufficient gumption to change their lives?

But here’s the rub.  I have always advocated human adaptation as a mode of self-improvement.  Understand that there are myriads of opportunity, personal as well as professional, just waiting to be grasped, provided you look hard enough.  But what happens to those who can’t this because of themselves, their circumstances, or the people surrounding them? This is where Rattigan cuts to the chase, and why he is so significant fir adaptation studies.  Crocker-Harris is imprisoned in a sink-hole job, with a loveless marriage and a unsympathetic headmaster who’d rather placate the governors and engage a new, younger teacher who will automatically attract popularity.  Crocker-Harris has nowhere to go except to teach English at a Cramer for eight months of the year.  The moment of truth arrives two thirds of the play, when Taplow, the boy finishing off his Greek course with some private study sessions, buys Crocket-Harris a small leaving-present of Broiwning’s translation of the AGAMEMNON.  Crocker-Harris realises that, contrary to what he assumed, the students respected him.  His classes might not have been that entertaining, but they were not as bad as Crocker-Harris had assumed. In a sequence of unendurable poignancy, he begins to cry, even in front of Taplow.  For the first time he has allowed his emotions to flow - a definite bad mark as far as the school ethos is concerned, but a positive development fir Crocker-Harris.

Rattigan here emphasises the importance of emotion, of being true to oneself as well as others, irrespective of the situation.  It’s a lesson as true today as it was in 1948 when the play was written.  If you acknowledge to yourself the presence of powerfulr emotions within you, you are on the road to successful adaptation.  It is just that people find it difficult to admit this, whatever the context.  Just think if Barry Evans, one of my schoolteachers, had felt he could talk more about his passion for astronomy, or to admit his homosexuality, or even admit his professional frustrations to his students.  I had the same dilemmas when I talk about having cancer, but have discovered that students learn more about me, and I learn more about them, if I do.

And that\s the major lesson of THE BROWNING VERSION.  It’s not about much in terms of content, but describes Crocker-Harris”s mental discovery that he has a heart and soul just like everyone.  It’s just a matter of finding it, that’s all.  The play ends with a pyrrhic victory, as Crocker-Harris calls the headmaster and insists that he will claim his right to speak last at Parents’ Day, even though the headmaster wanted a younger and more popular teacher who is leaving to fulfil that role.  Crocker-Harris has had enough of being pushed around; it’s tome to assert himself, even though no one has seen this personality before.

The play has resonance for me, because it not only describes a culture I know well, but because it deals with emotions of the heart. It forces viewers to reflect on themselves, and consider whether they should made similar processes of mental adjustment  Most significantly, it confirms how adaptation as a vitally trans historical power, influencing all our lives.

Complexifying adaptations

Last week, on a brief visit to England, I saw a production of AMADEUS. I have to admit it was three hours of hell for me, as it contained all the elements I would not expect from a National Theatre production.  The two central performances were execrable: Mozart was a one- note-performance of unrelenting screaming, the kind of person I’d like to slap hard and often, while the actor playing Salieri clearly enjoyed Beverly opportunity to dominate the stage in a sub-Olivier performance of embarrassing quality.

I would have left the performance alone, but then I thought; as an adaptation critic it behaves me to think more deeply about my responses.  What was I really disliking, the performances or my immediate impressions of the current production compared to fond memories of past productions? Do I need to rethink my response in terms of today’s performance, even though I personally hated it?  I sat down and thought a little. The director was obviously interested in rethinking AMADEUS as a public melodrama in which Mozart automatically assumed prominence despite anything Salieri did.  He was a genius and revelled in the licence that gave him to misbehave. The fact he was emotionally dead did not matter. Salieri tried to maintain his sang frond but his desire to revenge himself on Mozart (and through him, God). Got the better of him. The play became a succession of sequences where the two tried to outdo one another in terms of bad behaviour, even if this had a destructive effect on the actors’ characterisations.

The production had an old-fashioned feel to it, with stage devices inspired by Brecht that would not have looked out of place in the 1980s. But here’s my age coming to affect my judgement; even if the audience were mostly white and retired, we would not expect them to cast their collective minds back to another theatrical era. Better to approach the conscious anachronisms as a means of distancing an audience and thereby prevent them from empathising with the main characters. The device would also take us out of the eighteenth century and make us understand its transhisoricity better.

The same also applies to the on stage presence of the band, providing background music as well as the accompaniment to the songs in the original script. They resembled the group who played in the National’s highly successful GALILEO thirty-eight years ago. I am not knocking the National - far from it. I am pleased that they draw on their own history to show the value of alienation.

What does this analysis signify for adaptation? First, we should be prepared to sacrifice our judgement in favour of looking at a production in more detail. Second, we should realise that looking at adaptations means looking at the contexts of production, to tell us more about why a product;on appeared as it does.  This doesn’t always mean the staging, or the director, or the theatre company, but taking into account audience reaction, as well as making more sense of our own reactions.  That won’t make our task any easier, but it might aid the process of negotiation between different interests which I believe adaptation studies needs to promote to develop further.

Blog on SIX TURKISH FILMMAKERS

A blog-post on my new book, published 14 Nov.. 2016

https://uwpress.wisc.edu/blog/

Adapting Jules Verne for radio: AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, dramatized by Terry James (1991).  Dir. Janet Whittaker.  Perf. Leslie Phillips, Jim Broadbent, Diana Quick.  BBC Radio 4 Extra, 19-22 Jun. 2017.

After listening to this colorful dramatization of the Verne classic, I understood the novel’s debt to classic picaresque adventures such as Don Quixote.  Phineas Fogg (Leslie Phillips) and Passepartout (Yves Aubert) are the Quixote and Sancho Panza figures, while Princess Aouda (Diana Quick) is Dulcinea.  Sergeant Fix (Jim Broadbent) is the classic fly in the ointment, pursuing Fogg worldwide but failing to arrest him, despite valiant efforts to obtain a warrant to do so.

In truth the story of pure hokum, dramatizing late Victorian English attitudes to other countries with wry humor.  Verne conceived Fogg as a curious middle-aged man of the confirmed bachelor variety, apparently indifferent to everything and everyone and obsessed with the idea of arriving in different ports on time.  It does not matter whether he is in India, Hong Kong, or the United States; he believes that everything can be bought and sold for his benefit.  In the modern era he might be perceived as a classic supporter of the current government.  Leslie Phillips plays him with Rex Harrison-like suavity, but his air of nonchalance is abruptly disturbed by Aouda’s presence.  To his evident astonishment Fogg discovers that he has amorous feelings for her; and the two finish the adaptation by marrying.  So much for the ice-cool Englishman.

Passepartout is played by Aubert as a rubber-ball like figure, whose capacity to overcome adversity is apparently limitless.  Some of his adventures are explicitly comic (such as when he joins a group of Chinese acrobats to make money), but he remains faithful to his “Master” throughout, even though he finds some of Fogg’s mannerisms distinctly eccentric.  A French author looks at the English, and considers them very strange.

Janet Whittaker’s production advances through two parallel narratives, delivered directly to listeners by Passepartout and Fix.  Passepartout keeps a journal; Fix his police officer’s notebook.  When these two documents are used as material to keep the ship’s engine going on the final trip back from New York to Liverpool, Princess Aouda takes over the narration.  The technique of direct address helps us to understand the characters’ attitudes to what seems a ludicrous undertaking.  Despite Fogg’s inexhaustible energy, the idea of traveling the world in eighty days seems preposterous.  It is a tribute to the characters’ resilience that the three narratives gradually alter in tone, as Passepartout and Fix realize that the feat will be completed, whatever the cost.

The four parts are constructed as a series of picaresque episodes linked with electronic music from Wılfredo Acosta that gives an otherworldly atmosphere to the production.  The attitudes and social mores might be explicitly Victorian, but the tale is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, a testament to human ingenuity and to three indomitable spirits.