Around the World in Eighty Days in Under Sixty Minutes

Hardcover Theater has graced the small local stage with restlessly innovative productions in recent seasons, not least with the Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi adaptation A Princess of Mars and last spring's extraordinarily creepy and evocative fairy tale The Savage Joy of Breaking Things. The company also scored a hit at the 2007 Minnesota Fringe Festival with Around the World in 80 Days in Under 60 Minutes, which gooses Jules Verne's story on global exotica by staging it as a beat-the-clock game—can the show cover all the bases before the bell rings to signify that its hour is up? Almost surely, but the fun parts occur along the way.
Thursdays, Saturdays, 7 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Starts: Sept. 20. Continues through Oct. 7, 2007