Intimate venue enhances physical artistry of legendary mime

By Scott Schultz
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]

  Geffen Playhouse

At 79, world-renowned mime Marcel Marceau, is
performing a 17-evening engagement at Geffen Playhouse.

The main attraction didn’t speak a word, yet he said
volumes.

Marcel Marceau, the legendary mime, is approaching 80 years old
but this international icon hasn’t lost his physical genius,
which is on display at Geffen Playhouse for 17 performances.

Marceau separated his two-hour-and-15-minute performance into
two acts. Act One was the slightly serious “Pantomimes of
Style,” and Act Two was the brilliantly comedic
“Pantomimes of Bip.”

The programs change with each performance. In all, he pulls out
15 or 16 silent stories from a repertoire of more than 75.

In the more serious first act, Marceau captivated the audience
with his incredible muscle control and the ability to create his
own environments, complete with as many invisible props
necessary.

Although sometimes it can be difficult to immediately figure out
the storylines of his five- to 10-minute mime-ologues, the scenes
are greatly rewarding for the audience members who follow them to
the end.

Marceau displayed his vast and complex storytelling abilities.
In “Soliloquy of Three Lost Souls,” he tells three
different stories in one mime, complete with three different
perspectives. In “The Public Garden,” he portrays more
than half a dozen characters with amazing ranges of age, gender and
motivations.

However, it is the second act’s “Pantomimes of
Bip” that makes this rare engagement an absolute must-see.
Bip, the most beloved character of Marceau, came out to an
immediate ovation from the crowd. The character is a throwback to
the silent movie stars that influenced Marceau’s stage
comedy.

And watching Bip’s frustrations build as he fails in his
attempts to drink water to avoid seasickness on a choppy boat ride,
or to convince a lion he’s supposedly taming to jump through
a hula hoop is like watching the classic comedy of Charlie Chaplin
or Buster Keaton.

Bip wears traditional white face paint to bring out
Marceau’s piercingly animated eyes. He also wears bright red
lipstick and a ragged hat garnished with a bright red flower. The
sad-sack protagonist is reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s
tramp character, but where Chaplin’s characters tend to have
a violent streak, Marceau’s Bip tends to rely on pathos.

Although Marceau does not speak, the mime-ologues do utilize
sound effects to enhance the scenes. One situation where it was
particularly effective was the bittersweet humor of “Bip as a
Street Musician.” In this scene, Bip is a street violinist
whose curbside classical piece is intruded upon by a patriotic
marching band.

The run at Geffen is being billed as the most intimate setting
of his 50-plus-year career. The intimacy of this venue provides the
rare opportunity for the audience to appreciate the physical
artistry of one of the true icons of international theater.

Marcel Marceau performs at Geffen Playhouse through Aug. 18.
Student rush tickets with a valid student ID are available for $10
on a limited basis at the box office one hour before showtime.