This fizzy and mostly winning production manages to give us Jules Verne's adventure tale, complete with elephant (the gentle Kiouni, who helps bridge a railway gap between Bombay and Calcutta), steamboats, trains and a cast of more than 30 characters, using only a few props, five agile actors, two inventive sound artists and some old-fashioned ingenuity.
"I put myself in the 'move well' category," the 30-year-old New Jersey native told Huffington, a reference to industry parlance for agile actors or actresses who aren't dancers.
Mr. Mwine is such an agile, mercurial actor.
The titular character is her brother, an agile young actor who chain-smokes cigars, punctuates every sentence with "goddam" and is constantly tormented by his other five siblings who are, variously, dead, teaching, running a household or living as a Carthusian monk.
"He is a very agile player.
Still, it's not as spatially confining as some other Gelb-era productions, and it will serve as a workable backdrop for agile singing actors.
Cheadle has always been the most agile of actors, tough to keep up with as he switches from menacing stillness to a snapping wit; in short, he is made for Davis, and there's no doubt that he nails his hero, down to the raw rasp of his speech.
Mr. Carrey, who also played the Grinch, can be an agile and restrained actor when the mood strikes him.
"Tortilla Soup" has more warm, likable actors and agile performances than this material merits.
"We honor dinner," Martin states, but in a pale recycling of Ang Lee's "Eat Drink Man Woman," this film by María Ripoll "has more warm, likable actors and agile performances than this material merits" (Elvis Mitchell).
