‘Smallest Theater in the World’ on the Road Again : Drama: Impresario Marcel Steiner is getting more mileage out of his motorcycle-mounted mini-theater (capacity: 2).

Pulling in a full house is never a problem for Marcel Steiner, the owner, producer and star of “The Smallest Theater in the World.” It holds an audience of two.

The theater, about the size of a large wardrobe, is mounted on a sidecar attached to a temperamental Russian motorbike.

Steiner once simulated the storm scene in “The Tempest” by revving up the motorbike and driving it round in circles with the audience hanging on for dear life inside.

The theater was forced off the road two years ago by financial problems and a cracked drive shaft but thanks to a sponsorship deal and a mechanical overhaul, Steiner is back next month with an epic production called “The Private Wives of Henry VIII.”

The inside of the theater is decorated with marble patterned wallpaper and the outside has classical columns and doors marked “Box Office,” “Stalls,” “Stage Door” and “Fire Exit.”

It may be small but Steiner is adamant that his audience get its money’s worth.

“We do it properly, the whole bit--lots of scenery, plenty of props, sound and lighting effects,” he said in an interview.

His new production is loosely based on the 1933 Alexander Korda film “The Private Lives of Henry VIII.” It will be staged at the southern English seaside resort of Margate, where his new Dutch sponsors own the town fair.

Steiner is taking Charles Laughton’s role as the much-married Tudor monarch and two other members of the cast, Geraldine and Maureen Marsh, will each play three of his six wives.

Steiner is experimenting with an inflatable costume that can be pumped up to show Henry’s increasing obesity.

“People think I’m eccentric,” he said. “But I’m just interested in comic concepts.”

“The Smallest Theater in the World” dates back about 20 years.

When Steiner fell in love with and bought an ancient motorbike with a huge sidecar, a fellow actor said: “You could build a theater in that thing.” A week later it was finished.

“It was only meant as a joke originally but it just kept going,” Steiner said. “It became an institution.”

Over the years Steiner has produced a string of classic 30-minute shows including “The Guns of Navarone,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Cinderella.”

“We nearly did ‘West Side Story’ but I’m not a good enough singer,” he said.

“The Tempest” was staged in the parking lot of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon while the full version of the play was being put on inside.

Another hit, “The Decline and Fall of the Third Reich,” covered World War II in its entirety and included Jesse Owens, a black American, winning the gold medal in the long jump at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The actor playing Owens would start his run-up outside and jump into the theater onto a small bed of sand on the floor of the tiny stage--an operation requiring fairly careful rehearsal to avoid injury.

The tiny theater has been rebuilt several times and is now on its fifth motorcycle.

During “The Guns of Navarone” the curtains caught fire when Steiner blew a jet of flame out of his mouth to simulate the firing of the giant guns.

It impressed an American who said he was a New York producer.

“He said ‘I’m going to take you to Broadway.’ I said I had already been,” said Steiner who has performed in North America, the Netherlands and Scotland.