By John Gibson. Venue 33 – Below at Pleasance Courtyard

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With a name like Marcel you better be good at pretending to be caught in a high wind. But the story of Chaplin requires so much more than mime, and thankfully Marcel Cole has a quietude and dramatic chops that beguiled the audience on this fine Fringe morning. Our protagonist skips through the London years to get to The Gold Rush (with some crowd pleasing re-enactments of classic Chaplin moments) before setting up a Great Dictator denouement which (although well-performed) doesn’t really add anything to the conversation.

His use of audience participation is both assured and risky; as he asks a lot of his volunteers, who compliment his act well without much confusion or resistance. I feel that given Cole’s obvious talents he could choose to do something less predictable and spread the joy of mime to a much larger audience.