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Marceau's old tricks still the best

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Marcel Marceau, City Hall

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The Harbour Fest might have all the glitz but it doesn't have a monopoly on legendary performers, much less on 80-year-old clowns who can hold a packed house spellbound by waving his hands and jiggling his eyebrows.

Marcel Marceau, with no right to be so nimble at his age, continues to emulate the standards of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

With a few precise movements of his fingers and face he is a fish, a flower, a lion. Behind his painted Pierrot mask he is everyone and no one, creating entire worlds with a shrug of the shoulders, a stomp of the foot, an anguished expression or an exaggerated slide down the deck of a rolling ship.

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With almost no props, Marceau creates the sort of special effects you cannot load into a computer programme. The trick lies in convincing the audience it can see something that isn't there.

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