The Theater: Something to See

Unknown and unheralded in the U.S., French Pantomimist Marcel Marceau, 32, opened last week in Manhattan (off Broadway) for a two-week run. When the curtain rose on a bare stage and a black backdrop, it looked as if Mime Marceau, gesticulating but wordless, had about as much chance of success in hard-to-please New York as a mute at a hog-calling contest. But next morning the critics called him "superb," his work a "masterpiece."

In a series of brilliant pantomimes, he managed to convey with grace and wit the look of a man doing such assorted things as walking a tightrope, mounting and descending a staircase, and catching fluttering butterflies. At his funniest, Marceau mimes both David and Goliath in a tour de force of machine-gun character switches, from the sweet, flute-playing shepherd to the hulking brute and back again, as their historic battle rages. At his perceptive best, in Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, he accomplishes in less than three memorable minutes what many a novelist has failed to do in volumes: Marceau's youth strides radiantly onward until, by imperceptible degrees, he slows, fades, becomes gaunt and stooped, crumbles and dies.

Each pantomime is a small, precise work of art with a beginning, middle and end. New York had never experienced anything quite like it. But Marceau,whose career began, nine years ago as a mime in Jean-Louis Barrault's Paris company, has already made triumphal tours in Italy, Western Germany and Scandinavia. By week's end, he was the fashionable thing for New Yorkers to see. He was preparing to move up to Broadway for another two-week run, CBS-TV wanted him for the Ed Sullivan show, but NBC-TV got him first for a Spectacular, and he was all set to go on a brief tour of the U.S. and Canada.