Such a bare stage is a rare sight. Black curtains frame the wings and provide the only backdrop. A spotlight defines an area that would be no different from any other if it were not for the presence of a white-faced statue. Wiry and still, the statue’s expression is neutral – not the blank face of one uninvolved, but a face balancing the emotions of joy and horror equally. Then the statue defies its own nature by beginning to move.
The icon that is Marcel Marceau and the archetype of mime are inextricably linked. The white face was not Marceau’s originally but it is now. He took it on in homage to the 19th century clown Pierrot, created by Gaspard Debureau. Today, Marcel Marceau is famous even among those who do not know who he is or even if he is still alive; while the name of the clown that inspired him has faded from modern lips, Marceau has all but achieved immortality in his own lifetime.
Marceau began his career over fifty years ago just after the Second World War. He trained under Etienne Decroux in Paris, but after several years the two parted ways over opinions about mime’s place in culture. Marceau felt it should be on the stage and he spent the rest of his life proving himself correct. His most famous and enduring character is Bip, named after Charles Dicken's Pip in 'Great Expectations'. His tragi-comic antics in everyday situations have become Marceau’s trademark. Bip’s battered hat with its ubiquitous red flower is one of Marceau’s few props.
From the classic use of a non-existent wall for balance to the beautifully subtle use of an intangible cane to help him walk, Marceau’s characters call up a world of illusion more convincing than any set. He prefers to make the visible invisible, and yet very real, through the use of his own body. His incredibly articulate hands summon birds, fish, angels and demons. His face creates jabbering gossips and stern lawyers all with the raise of an eyebrow or the curl of a lip.
Marceau sees his work as a reflection of reality, his characters illuminating implicit behaviour in us all. He sees poetry in the world and incorporates this into his work, conjuring and manifesting it in the physical. He sees life from the perspective of the romantic dramaturge, with pain, passion and love turning in constant turmoil. His work is polarised to extremes in order to demonstrate the moral world and yet filled with shades of grey as he expresses human nature.
The man has a genius for his work. He wrote the book on modern mime and any other mime artist of this century can draw their roots through him. He is now seventy-six years old and still performing the routines he has done nearly all his life. Yet it is the tragic fate of those as original as Marceau to be seen as imitators of their own art. His performance has the shine of excellence, but one is inclined to want more. Every movement has been copied by others and so, in the flesh, this god of mime does not completely astound. You want to be awed, but he is man not god and there lies the source of any disappointment one might feel. It is with some irony that Marceau performs one of his most canonical pieces, the metaphoric progression from youth through maturity to old age and death. Marceau has enacted this piece through nearly all of those stages in his own life and you cannot watch it without being reminded of his own mortality.
Marceau hasn’t played in Ireland in twenty years and in all likelihood he will not play here again. He loves the place, the people and the art our island has produced. If the opening night’s reaction to his Dublin performance is anything to go by then the people love him just as much in return. His solo performances drew laughs, applause and even the occasional gasp. For two hours he generated world after world on an empty stage, his only props a couple of hats and some benches.
March Rogers
Marcel Marceau plays the Olympia in Dublin nightly until Saturday 17 February
