Silent knight

Marceau is still a master

by Iris Fanger

MARCEL MARCEAU, with Györgyi Biro and Thorsten H. Rheinhold. Presented by the American Repertory Theatre at the Loeb Drama Center through July 30.

Silence is not a commodity that the contemporary world values or even finds comfortable. Consider the number of people who turn on the answering machine or the television set the instant the door closes behind them, or who rush to the cell phone when alone in their car.

So it's all the more exotic and wonderful to encounter the great French mime, Marcel Marceau, back in our midst for five weeks with a double program of one-man solo turns. (Well, not exactly solo because he's assisted by a pair of fetching sign holders, after the old vaudeville custom, but they're mere trimming.) Having already been dubbed a "Living National Treasure" in Japan and awarded a clutch of honorary degrees in this country and more levels of the French Legion of Honor than is imaginable for a living person, the 77-year-old Marceau is one of those legends that does not disappoint.

After the traditional three knocks of a staff on the floor to signal the start of each performance, the curtain rises on a black stage. Slowly, the lights come up on a single figure, a man in whiteface, dressed all in white, his feet in ballet slippers. With nothing but his body, his blazing eyes, and his facial expression, moving in rhythmic time to the heartbeat of humanity, Marceau creates a universe of souls on stage. The program -- and there will be two of them in the course of the five-week run -- is divided in half. The first part consists of the one-act dramas Marceau has created for a cast of characters all played by himself; the second is filled with playlets about Bip, the Everyman he created in the wake of World War II, when he was demobilized after serving in the First French Army.

Marceau studied with two of the great French mimes, Charles Dullin and Étienne Decroux (along with Jean-Louis Barrault and the ART's Alvin Epstein, who were in his class). And he admits to having been influenced directly by Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, who was a popular figure during Marceau's childhood. Bip, like the Little Tramp, is a man at the mercy of the elements -- animal, vegetable, and mineral -- who carries himself with pride while waiting for the inevitable fall. As a lion tamer, he is bested by the beast; as a street musician making sweet music on his violin, he is trampled by a marching band and forced to exchange his artistry for the lockstep formation of the insistent crowd. At the end of each sketch, however, there is a shrug of the shoulders and a lift of the torso to indicate that the character is ready for the next encounter, with ever-ready hopes for a better day. Bip's costume never changes: white sailor pants, striped shirt, and battered high hat topped by a jaunty red flower stuck up like a periscope to reconnoiter the approaching terrain. He's most endearing in the Boston premiere of "Bip and the Dating Service," in which he's overwhelmed by so many possibilities that he loses the one girl he might love.

The most virtuosic pieces are the ones in which Marceau plays the entire cast of characters, especially in his classic "The Public Garden." Beginning as a statue that comes to life and steps down off its pedestal, he becomes the parade of persons in the park. A debonair man about town twirls his moustache; a gossipy Madame Defarge type knits with extraordinary flying fingers that mimic the twitching of her mouth; a balloon seller tries to keep his wares from tugging him into the sky. It's best to keep your eyes on the transition moments, when he transforms from one character to the next with a turn of the shoulder or a walk backward into someone else. Marceau's movements are a mastery of economy and detail: a single gesture delineates exactly what he means you to believe.

Is it dance? Is it theater? Does it matter? The artistry of Marceau has transcended such pedestrian queries and now exists as itself, in an increasingly cluttered performance landscape. He ends every evening with "The Maskmaker," in which he becomes an artisan trapped by his art until he tugs off the false face to reveal the tragic performer underneath. If it's a metaphor for the actor's life, it doesn't quite sum up Marceau, who never lets the audience into any particular private place beyond the realm of theatrical artifice. Maybe, after more than half a century traveling the international stages, that's where he lives, full-time.