Word: marceau
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Those TV actors, with their bland gesticulations and hammy facial expressions, could certainly take a lesson or two from Marcel Marceau, the French pantomimist, the most famous living mine, if not the greatest...
Marceauu's notoriety arises not only from his "Style" exercises, in which he depicts a variety of professions and predicaments, but also form hie "Bip" pantomimes. The "Bip" character, whom Marceau created at the beginning of his career, is a clown whose hallmarks are his battered, beflowered opera hat and his penchant for misadventures. In Marceau's stint at the Colonial, he spends the first half of the program engaging in several style pantomimes, and the second half portraying Bip and his further...
...Marceau plays both types of role with minimal theatrical trappings: his only accessories are music, which includes both recognizable classical pieces and simple recordings of nose; and lights, which either spotlight his antics or swirl around him to create confusion. In most of the skits, however, Marceau works solo on a blackened stage, clad in white ballet shoes, bodysuit and vest with a facefull of chalk...
...scene, entitled "Pickpocket's Nightmare," Marceau employs two black panels and black box. These props allow him to perform a marvellous illusion: while Marceau stands at one end of the panels, heartaches behind them, his hand arms appearing in physically impossible places: above the screens, across the length of the screens, and on either side of them. However, the pleasing effect of this seemingly magical trick disappears when two extra pairs of hands appear simultaneously with Marceau, showing the audience that even the great silent communicator needs a little help now and then...
ANOTHER MAJOR disappointment also mars the performance. At the start of the show, a pink-clad troubadour emerges from a fanfare and a see of light. He holds up a scroll-like banner, announcing the name of the next skit. The house lights blacken, and seconds later Marceau, dressed in his far less elaborate white costume, poses in readiness on the exact spot that the troubadour held. How does he make this miraculous switcheroo? The audience finds out at intermission, when the Marceau look-alike troubadour comes out to take a bow with his boss...