If good intentions made for good art, then every biopic about Jesus Christ, from “The Robe” to “The Greatest Story Ever Told” to “The Passion of the Christ,” would be a work of art rather than the bombastic piece of junk that they are.
Other such worthy subjects are racism, homophobia, sexism and anti-Semitism, especially as unleashed during the Holocaust. Marshall Pailet and Ethan Slater’s “Marcel on the Train,” which opened Sunday at the Classic Stage Company, attempts to be a pocket-size “Schindler’s List” but runs off its noble rails at almost every turn.
Before he was Marcel Marceau, the famous French mime was Marcel Mangel, the son of a kosher butcher. During World War II, the young Mangel joined the Organisation Juive de Combat that rescued thousands of Jewish children and adults living in France during the Nazi occupation. “Marcel on the Train” dramatizes one such escape into Switzerland that has Mangel (Ethan Slater) leading a group of adolescent boys and girls who are disguised as Boy Scouts.
The kids are not all right; in fact, they’re rightfully scared for their lives — so Mangel entertains them with his mime. The problem is, Slater is not a very good mime. The actors playing the children (Alex Wyse, Maddie Corman, Max Gordon Moore, Tedra Millan) laugh uproariously at his silent comedy sketches. We in the audience do not. Strangely enough, Slater’s Mangel is much better at telling gags, a few of which are downright smile-worthy. Are we being told that Mangel went into the wrong line of work, that Marcel Marceau really should have been a stand-up comic instead of a mime?
Slater recalls a young Woody Allen minus the irony.
Even more problematic, the Nazis here don’t appear to be very attentive to the train car carrying these Jewish children. When one officer (the multi-cast Aaron Serotsky) finally does show up to ask for their papers, the kids immediately shed their nervous fear to defy his orders. If ever I talked to one of the nuns in middle school the way these children sass back to the Nazi in “Marcel on the Train,” I would have been sent packing to limbo on the spot.
There are some plays and musicals that successfully cast adults as children. “Putnam County Spelling Bee” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” come to mind. “Marcel on the Train” is not one of those works. The playwrights have burdened each child character with a future episode that tells us what happened to him or her in the 1960s or ’70s. These flash-forwards destroy what little dramatic suspense there is.
A bright spot is the production. Scott Davis’ set and Studio Luna’s lighting simply and effectively capture train travel in the year 1943.
Marshall Pailet directs.
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