Suman Mukhopadhyay (Picture by Surjendu Acharya)

As it is in any art that is great, the mystery of mime is to please and touch the audience,? Marcel Marceau, arguably the world?s greatest mime artiste, had once said. Whatever faults Suman Mukhopadhyay?s ?Classic Mime?, performed at Rabindra Sadan on the evening of February 12, may have had ? and it had its share of those ? there were moments which touched the audience.

Unfortunately, however, these moments were not always sustained through the one-and-a-half-hour programme, and in some of the episodes it was downright difficult to grasp what was trying to be conveyed. Since the magic of mime lies in the ability of the actor to entice viewers to see and sense that which is not there, this was a let-down.

However, Mukherjee demonstrated his command over his craft as he executed, along with his troupe of seven juniors, the seven individual sequences. Whether it was in the precision of expression with which he relayed the bafflement of a jilted lover in Modern Valentine, or in the sense of comic timing as the fat man who tries to squeeze in-to a pair of tight pants in It?s my style, his talents came out well.

One of the memorable sequences in the programme was the one called Kolkata Metro Rail; the sequence showcased Mukherjee?s skills in choreography. The actors moved in perfect synchrony ? gliding their feet across the floor of the stage, conjuring up the image of a train entering a station.

Others slid down the stage with their arms grasping imaginary overhead handles on the train, while those pretending to be waiting on the platform dodged as an imaginary blast of wind hit them.

And all the while in the background were people getting on or off the escalators.

The more abstract sequences ? My Dream, which tried to capture the artist?s frustration with the modern, mercenary world, and Imagination, in which a prince imagines that the stone statues in his garden come to life (clearly influenced by Marceau?s The Public Garden) ? failed to really move. Materialising the abstract is not Mukherjee?s strong point.

However, what more than compensated for the lacunae, was the grace of movement ? Mukherjee experiments with fusion, merging Western classical ballet with Kathakali with aplomb, for instance ? and fluidity of gesture, which are so vital to successful mime.