Philly Fringe 2025: Thaddeus McWhinnie Phillips’s Around the World in 80 Toys

Born into a wealthy shoe manufacturing family, a young Méliès made puppet theaters and marionettes and subsequently established a major Parisian career as a magician, impresario, actor, and ground-breaking filmmaker. Méliès made over 500 films, including the seminal work A Trip to the Moon (1902). But competition in the nascent film world was fierce, and though he was often lauded, Méliès was ultimately bankrupted. He ended his life in poverty working in a toy shop, the inspiration for Phillips’s theatrical work.

A witty journey

80 Toys opened on a bare stage in the FringeArts theater. A small table in the center was covered by a red cloth and set with a lamp, a coffee cup, a wooden box, and some small props. A video screen above gave time and place as “Montparnasse Train Station, Paris 1925”. Gingerly, Phillips peeked up from behind the table, drank from the cup, and unspooled his charming character—by turns a 1920s everyman, Chaplinesque comedian, and slyly winking actor, always evoking Méliès’s work and persona.

Dropping the red cloth, he revealed a shadowbox (a shoe-box reference to Méliès’s family business) filled with intriguing toys and rolled out his clever construct via video closeups, with cameras hidden onstage and inside props. Magnified, the toys became fellow actors as Phillips opened a beautifully bound period copy of Verne’s book, morphing its title into the title of his 60-minute uninterrupted show.

Then the actor and his charming toys (some wind-ups) took the audience on a witty journey, meandering through Verne’s geographic novel. Phillips made multiple nods to Méliès’s career and film style: the use of stop-motion, clever camera angles and shots, frequent smoke screens, sleight-of-hand tricks (successful and intentionally not so), and even his costume choice.

At first the show seemed innocently uncomplicated: one actor, his miniature props, and a dropped-down video screen reminiscent of mid-century home movies. But 80 Toys is actually a complex meta (and metaphysical) conception drawing heavily on cinema history and techniques, contemporary references, movie music, modern video usage, and vaudeville and silent-movie performance styles, all centered around Verne’s famous (and often adapted) novel. Phillips’s winning performance was the centerpiece of all this complexity, his character adeptly layered with whimsy and charm and its creator’s deft complexity and cleverness.

Developing a show for adults

But interesting as 80 Toys was, it had some shortcomings. FringeArts advertised that the show was appropriate for ages 8 and up, and offered a children’s ticket price, but 80 Toys clearly is not youth oriented. The Saturday matinee had many audience members much younger than 8. In all fairness, most were quite attentive, even while much of the work’s subtlety went clearly over their heads.

And it became obvious that 80 Toys—as openly stated by Phillips in a charming post-show Q&A—is a work in development being modified after each performance. Some dramatic moments were artistically cogent, but others were clearly under construction or improvised. While it’s exciting to see a work take shape, it was a surprise to discover that despite Phillips’s sophisticated body of work, the creative team’s impressive credentials, and the $35 tickets, this Curated festival presentation was not a polished theatrical product.

Also, while it's understandable that the festival producers might’ve needed to put this marquee product in a venue with some capacity, the FringeArts venue was an imperfect place for a work so deeply grounded in intricacy and intimacy.

A memorable afternoon

Still, Around the World in 80 Toys made for a riveting and memorable theatrical afternoon, a chance to experience this major multi-hyphenate artistic practitioner and videographer in person. Inspired by magician and filmmaker Méliès, the audience saw Phillips working assiduously and with wit to hybridize film and live performance and “stretch the limits of what’s possible onstage.”