By Tyler Ody
The gala night performance of the Barn Theatre in Cirencester’s Built by Barn production of Toby Hulse’s fast paced and playfully comic adaptation of Jules Verne’s epic adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days was saved on the 1 February when James El-Sharawy, a builder turned actor, who plays ‘Passepartout’ and other characters in the production stepped into the breach whilst delivering his lines off stage.
Around twenty minutes before the end of the show on the 1 February, a radiator became dislodged from the wall of the theatre when one of the cast members accidentally collided with it whilst pushing a trolley off stage. Water began spewing from the severed pipe, and further chaos was prevented by the quick thinking of the Barn’s backstage management team as they sought to stem the flow of water with towels and anything else to hand.
Unbeknownst to the team, James El-Sharawy is a builder when he’s not taking to the stage. Seeing the catastrophe unfold, he rushed to wings and while delivering his lines off stage proceeded to stem the flow of water by isolating the radiator pipe. Adam Elliot as Phileas Fogg and Evangeline Dickson as Fix of the Yard continued to play out the story, and minutes later James re-emerged stage side without missing a beat.
Heralded on the night by the various reviewers and audience alike as, “one of the funniest productions ever staged at the Barn,” it’s a show that Holby City and Casualty TV star Jason Durr also described as “an absolute must see.”
Around the World in Eighty Days, which runs at the award-winning Cotswolds venue
until 11 th March, is directed by Joseph O’Malley, who previously directed the Barn Theatre’s productions of The Hound of the Baskervilles, The 39 Steps and Ben Hur. In the great Victorian Age, it is clearly impossible to go around the world in eighty days, and only an idiot would try it.
It is also clearly impossible to tell this story with only three actors, but these idiots are going to take us all on a breath-taking roller-coaster ride around the world; filled with thrills and adventure, and no short order of panache, in a Built By Barn version of a rollicking, side splitting, laugh a minute, adaptation. Maybe, through the power of human invention and a bit of Barn ingenuity, they might just pull it off.
The production opens the Barn Theatre’s 2023 Season which also includes the first stage adaptation of Morpurgo’s 1990 Carnegie Medal shortlisted novel Waiting for Anya (27 March – 5 May), a new staging of Noël Coward’s comedy of manners Private Lives (15 May – 24 June), a revival of the Tony and Olivier award-winning musical Once (3 July – 12 August), the world premiere of Richard Hough and Ben Morales Frost’s new musical Sin: A New Musical of Revenge (18 th August – 16 th September) and the premiere of Alan Pollock’s festive adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story Treasure Island (20 November – 6 th January).
More information can be found at barntheatre.org.uk