PORT TOWNSEND — London; New York City; San Francisco; Hong Kong; Colombo, Ceylon. Ocean liners, speeding trains, screaming gale winds. Reporters Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland embrace it all in “Around the World in Less Than 80 Days,” the show reopening Key City Public Theatre this week.
This is a distinctly Key City production, starring Maggie Jo Bulkley as the two traveling journalists. It’s also a world premiere — so “everything’s an experiment,” said artistic director Denise Winter.
David Natale, a Seattle-based performer well-known to Port Townsend audiences, has penned the play, a high-speed comedy based on the 1873 novel by Jules Verne.
After a pay-what-you-wish preview tonight, “Around the World” will open Friday for a four-week run at the transformed Key City Playhouse, 419 Washington St.
Tickets and showtimes through May 8 can be found at keycitypublictheatre.org while the box office can be reached at 360-385-5278.
The story is about a race, yes. It’s also about women, the joy of travel — and triumph.
Bisland and Bly, personified by Bulkley, set out to see the world their way, while the men around them have to back off and watch.
These men include Verne himself, along with newspaper mogul Joseph Pulitzer, both portrayed by Natale. Then there are Phileas Fogg, Verne’s fictional traveler played by Brendan Chambers, and the valet Passepartout, portrayed by Tomoki Sage.
Christa Holbrook, Maude Eisele and Consuelo Aduviso complete the cast while Margie McDonald, Karen Anderson and Bry Kifolo create sets, sound and lighting.
“I want to write stories. And no one is going to stop me,” Bly proclaims at the start of the show.
Guys tell her that, to traverse the globe, she needs multiple steamer trunks, a male “protector” and a revolver. She’s having none of that.
“I believe the world will greet me the way I meet it,” the reporter announces, “so yes to intelligent questions and curiosity, and no to the revolver.”
“I love that she gets called an ‘ambitious little newshound,’” Bulkley said of Bly.
And of her counterpart Bisland, the actor noted an ambition of a different sort.
“Her love is for the artistic side of writing and the love of language,” Bulkley said.
While Bly is a reporter for Pulitzer’s New York World, Bisland writes for Cosmopolitan magazine. Finding their differences and leaning into them: For Bulkley, this is the delicious part of playing two roles.
As Bisland, she gets to meet a magical form of Verne, that French author and poet. She can’t quite believe her eyes when he appears. So Verne reminds her about the power of her imagination.
Which is a close relative to the power of theater.
After two years away from the performance stage, Bulkley and her fellow cast and crew members are eager to take audiences on a whirlwind ride. The playhouse has been fully reconfigured after its closure in March 2020, with an expanded theater full of new seats, new doors, a new box office and a new bar with a chandelier glittering overhead.
It all feels so good, Bulkley said.
“These women learn so much about themselves as they take these trips around the world,” she said, and with this show about travel and discovery, the actor hopes to likewise give audiences a new outlook.
“I want people to walk away feeling energized about life, and being alive,” she said.
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Jefferson County Senior Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.
