Review: Marcel on the Train, Ethan Slater Land-Mimes the Nazis

We don’t often think of mimes as heroic, but Marcel Marceau really was. He saved at least 70 French-Jewish children from the clutches of the Nazis alongside his cousin, Georges Loinger, who saved hundreds more. But, of course, for a natural clown like Ethan Slater, Marcel is the choice role.

Slater plays the legendary French mime in the new play, Marcel on the Train, which he co-wrote with director Marshall Pailet, and which is now making its world premiere at Classic Stage Company.

Set in 1943, it tells the story of Marceau (who was Jewish but changed his surname from “Mangel”) leading a group of Jewish orphans into Switzerland by disguising them as boy scouts (even the girls). Once they reach Annemasse, it’s just a 5km hike through the Alps to freedom. But before they can climb ev’ry mountain, they must complete a perilous train ride from Limoges, their real identification documents disguised in mayonnaise sandwiches (Marcel shrewdly surmises that the fastidious Nazi inspectors will be reluctant to risk oil stains on their uniforms). To keep the children occupied (and more importantly, silent), Marcel entertains them with the thing he knows best: mime.

Scenic designer Scott Davis impressively transforms CSC’s thrust stage into a train carriage, with benches rising out of the boards and the car’s wooden skeleton hanging overhead. Sarah Laux costumes the actors in muted colors and heavy fibers from the 1940s, inconspicuous for travel and just warm enough to make it over the mountains. The train melts away and an alpine forest appears in Davis’s most breathtaking scenic transition.

But before that we get to know les enfants on board: Gloomy Berthe (a naggingly persuasive Tedra Millan) is certain this mission will fail and she’ll end up in a concentration camp, like everyone else in her family. She’s too afraid to even leave the carriage to use the bathroom, so resourceful Adolphe (Max Gordon Moore’s smoky voice and troubled eyes tell the story of a boy who has had to grow up too fast) makes one for her, like a genuine boy scout (sound designer Jill BC Du Boff, burdened with conjuring ominous train whistles and sinister German voices, relishes this moment of comic relief).

Slater and Pailet interrupt the journey with scenes from the past and future, the cold blue light of time slashing into the carriage (gorgeous work from Studio Luna). We see Henri (Alex Wyse) all grown up in the mid-’60s as renowned philosopher Henri Dreyfuss (a fictional character according to my research, but a great opportunity for Wyse to show off his own impressive miming skills with invisible notecards and a podium). And then there’s terrified little Etiennette (Maddie Corman), who speaks not a word the entire play. A natural, she is the only one of Marcel’s charges to follow him into the craft, which Corman makes utterly believable and heartbreaking. Never has there been a more tragically toothy smile.

The tensest scene in this mime thriller occurs when a French Nazi collaborator enters the carriage looking for a group of missing Jewish orphans from Limoges. Aaron Serotsky (who takes every other part in the script) plays this role with terrifying inscrutability, causing us to hold our breaths for five minutes as it seems certain the whole plot will unravel.

Is he toying with the children, luxuriating in the power trip that is the only fringe benefit of a shitty job? Or is he actually saving them by spending so much time in the carriage that a crueler, more ideologically committed officer won’t be able to enter and discover that these are the kids they’re looking for? Or maybe he knows that he will have to answer to his God about the choice he makes right here and now. It’s a subject of debate amongst the children after the officer has departed, but it’s one of the many things in a time of monsters that is ultimately unknowable—like the thoughts that went through the border patrol agent’s brain the moment before he pulled the trigger.

An unexpectedly savvy playwright, Slater is an even better actor, contorting his rubbery face and tumbling across the stage to inject any bit of lightness he can into this heavy Holocaust drama. His theater-kid charisma becomes Marcel’s, and we see him gingerly tiptoe up to the border of reckoning with the fact that not every problem can be overcome by being always on—disappointingly without ever crossing over. There is no alpine character arc for Marcel, but we do come to appreciate how fearless improvisation with one’s own body might just be the most useful skill to have as the whole world crumbles. And even though I didn’t walk away with a new love of miming (certainly not as deep as Slater’s), I did not begrudge his victory lap, when he beautifully re-creates Marceau’s Bip Hunts Butterflies act.

Undeniably a vehicle for one of the most gifted physical actors currently working on stage and screen, Marcel on the Train also turns out to be a pretty good play. Certainly, it is a worthwhile reminder that we all have the ability to help our fellow humans, no matter how seemingly esoteric our skill set.