STAGE REVIEW : Mime Marceau’s Face and Body Bring His Bittersweet World to Life

Are there any superlatives left to describe Marcel Marceau? A fabulist of the ordinary, he traces his elliptical art in the air, yet it seems as emphatic as though chiseled in stone.

At the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, Marceau showed why he remains the world’s most sublime pantomimist. And it is not merely because he is still supple enough at age 65 to perform all the kinetic tricks of his trade--astonishing as that is to report.

What makes him an incomparable poet of silence is his vision of human possibilities from the cosmic to the comic, the tragic to the mundane. His one-man “mimodramas” are not only deeply felt, they explore an entire vocabulary of emotions as large and profound as any poet’s.

In “The Eater of Hearts: A Cruel Tale,” Marceau etched the suffering of a compulsive serial killer who literally tears the pulsing hearts out of those he loves most--until, in remorse and self-sacrifice, he finally tears out his own.

In “Bip Commits Suicide,” he depicted the flip side of self-sacrifice as a foppish lover so distraught over being jilted that he unsuccessfully attempts suicide by poison, pistol, sword, dagger, gas and noose--until, out of sheer exhaustion, he survives.

Marceau chose the program from his customary menu of two dozen routines, with the first half of the show devoted to so-called “style pantomimes” and the second half to “Bip pantomimes.” The difference between them has blurred over the years, but no matter.

In or out of character as Bip--his trademark Everyman with the battered stovepipe hat and the jaunty red flower--Marceau invested his efforts with seemingly perpetual energy. He looked fresher and sharper and more animated than he did 5 years ago, though none of his material was new.

Marceau portrayed everything from a broken-winged angel who falls to earth and discovers the pleasures of sin (“The Angel”) to a Kafka-esque maze of self-important time-servers and their hapless petitioners (“The Bureaucrats”). He showed us the ironic, terrifying fate of being left forever with a smile on one’s face (“The Mask Maker”).

His two most abstract pantomimes--”The Creation of the World” and “Bip Remembers”--were the most ambitious. The first expressed the primal grandeur of the universe with pulsing undulations that blossomed into sudden awakenings. The second personified man’s unrelenting history of war and tribulation, an existential glyph on the promise of salvation (or lack thereof).

But far be it from this white-faced clown to ignore the merry-go-round of life.

In a lighter vein, Marceau transformed the biblical epic of David and Goliath into a hilarious match-up between the meek and the mighty, took a ride on what must be the bumpiest train anywhere, satirized a cockeyed landscape painter, had fun with an ice skater who can’t skate and generally displayed a wistful fondness for amusement parks and carnivals.

The master was ably assisted by pantomimists Bogdan Novak and Christopher Goetsch, who “announced” each work with a tableau so striking they drew audible gasps, not to mention applause, from the two-thirds-capacity audience.