Theater review by Adam Feldman
An interesting fact: In the early 1940s, before he became the world’s most celebrated mime, a young Marcel Marceau was part of the clandestine French Jewish Resistance, which helped smuggle kids out of Nazi-dominated France. ''Marceau started miming to keep children quiet as they were escaping,” a fellow FJR member would later say. “It had nothing to do with show business. He was miming for his life.'' That certainly sounds dramatic, but—as illustrated by Marcel on the Train, a fictionalized biodrama by actor Ethan Slater and director Marshall Pailet—what makes a great footnote does not always make a great play.
Marcel on the Train | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid
As he proved in SpongeBob SquarePants and more recently in the Wicked movies, Slater has a real gift for movement. Marcel on the Train gives him ample opportunity to showcase it as Marceau tries with varying success to entertain his 12-year-old charges, Life Is Beautifully, and distract them from the dangers outside. The adolescents, all played by adult actors, include the virtuous Adolphe (Max Gordon Moore), the mischievous Henri (an amusing Alex Wyse), the sour and pessimistic Berthe (Tedra Millan) and the cowering Etiennette (Maddie Corman), who—perhaps in response to unspeakable trauma—never says a word.
Marcel on the Train | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid
Most of the play unfolds in a single train car, but director Pailet makes the most of a claustrophobic situation with a staging that finds variety where it can, with particularly valuable support from Studio Luna’s sharply defined lighting. But we know from the start that Marceau will survive and—thanks to a series of flash-forwards, including one rather quizzically set in Vietnam—that the children will as well. The result is a suspense story without any suspense, and the play’s attempts to add it defy belief: In one, a Nazi soldier (Aaron Serotsky) Christoph Waltz-es his way though an interrogation scene that makes no sense in retrospect; in another, the group seek to bluff its way out of a military confrontation, feigning guns by raising canes. Marcel on the Train culminates in Slater’s re-creation of one of Marceau’s signature early routines, “Bip and the Butterfly”—a piece inspired by a scene from the classic war film All Quiet on the Western Front—and while it doesn’t have quite the summational effect that seems intended, it does provide what the play's harrowing subject demands: a moment of silence.
Marcel on the Train. Classic Stage Company (Off Broadway). By Marshall Pailet and Ethan Slater. Directed by Pailet. With Slater, Tedra Millan, Alex Wyse, Max Gordon Moore, Aaron Serotsky, Maddie Corman. Running time: 1hr 40mins. No intermission.
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Marcel on the Train | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid
