Australian performer Marcel Cole talks to Kate Saffin about discovering Charlie Chaplin and how that led to him finding a different outlet for his early training as a dancer. He describes the painstaking work in developing the show, audience reactions and his plans for life after Edinburgh.
Smile: The Story of Charlie Chaplin is a whistle stop tour through Chaplin’s life in an hour from a silent re-enactment of his famous film The Gold Rush (1925), dipping back into childhood and growing up – during which he recruits members of the audience to play several parts – and on through the more difficult times as silent cinema waned and he resisted the advent of the talkies, his anti-fascist activism and the subsequent backlash, to his final years in Switzerland.
Marcel is his given name, after Marcel Marceau, his parents clearly saw his potential talent and his future at a very early age!
