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,,, Marcel Marceau

    A seventy-six year old man, whose only special effects are the ones he creates with his own face and body, without speaking a word, accomplished last night what neither Lotfi Mansouri nor George Lucas nor Michael Tilson Thomas can do: He kept a San Francisco audience so thoroughly enthralled that there was not a sound in the theater - not a whisper, not a cough, not the proverbial pindrop. Absolute silence. (Oh well, Jan Wahl did drop her purse at one point.)
    Marcel Marceau is the world's greatest mime  - and there are no runners up. His name is synonymous with that of his highly refined art. Mime is sort of the wordless poetry of the theater,  using  facial expression and dance-like movement to evoke a mood, a character or situation cameo, or a whole story with no verbal content at all.  There is a parallel in silent film, where the challenge of nonverbal communication was technologically built into the form, and, indeed, Chaplin and Keaton, et. al., are acknowledged influences on Marceau.
    But the silent films had all the freedom that cameras and sets and titles could add to make their job easier. Marceau's is a purer challenge. What can one wordless man in tights, without props, convey on an empty stage, with only movement and facial expression?
    He portrays a painter, in acutely observed detail, setting up his easel, blocking out his canvas, framing his subject landscape, squeezing the paint from a tube and mixing it on his palette - a complete situation drawn with unfailing accuracy and a soupçon of wry.
    He portrays a bird-keeper, his long-fingered hands fluttering like so many feathered avians, setting his charges free - they, reluctant at first to fly away. And when they are all gone, he enters the cage and is held there, captive himself, in a turnaround worthy of Hitchcock.
    He portrays the entire cast of characters in a cafe - the waiter kicking open the kitchen door, the lounge lizard leaning on the bar, the chef, the billiards player, the customer complaining about the bill.
    In a short and powerful piece accompanied by recorded choral music, one hand takes on the role of  a threatening bass section, the other the gentler tones of the sopranos and altos. As the two voices of the chorus come together, merging into a harmonious one, his hands reflect the reconciliation of the two, rising, emergent  in prayer.
    The second half of the program is devoted to Marceau's character, Bip, a Chaplinesque everyman who copes with everything from seasickness to marching bands. In a tour de force that mixes pathos with humor, he portrays a grief stricken would-be suicide who blunders as he attempts every conceivable method of doing away with himself, his ultimate failure to do so an expression of an indomitable spirit and the will to live.
    If Marceau doesn't have the suppleness of his youth, he has replaced it with a half century of artistic expression and skill, the subtlety and wisdom that only long experience can provide. With an economy of means that would make an ascetic blush, he engages the intellect and the feelings, he opens the imagination and the heart, and he stands triumphantly unequaled in his art and accomplishment.

    San Francisco, July 20, 1999                                         - Arthur Lazere