Starring Marcel Cole and directed by Mirjana Ristevski, Smile: The Story of Charlie Chaplin is a truly impressive theatrical performance that follows the screen comedian’s life and career from his childhood to his death.

Cole’s impression of Chaplin is superb. It’s performed in mime for the duration of Chaplin’s youth and his time making silent films, including Cole re-enacting scenes from The Gold Rush, until the point where Chaplin is finally persuaded to speak in the movie The Great Dictator. Cole gives a bravura rendition of the speech made by the tailor mistaken for the dictator Hynkel, then depicts his fall from grace after being condemned as a communist for refusing to inform on a friend and for having been anti-Nazi before the US entered the war, followed by his fourth and final marriage, his exile to Switzerland, and his honorary award from the Academy before he shuffles off, Chaplin-style, into the sunset to a tune most of us hadn’t realized Chaplin had composed.

It's a tribute to Chaplin rather than a complete biography: it skips over other details of Chaplin’s life, leaving out his earlier marriages and many of his films, particularly those made after the commercial failure of Monsieur Verdoux.

Cole accomplishes all of this with several hats and a few other props, some title cards and newspaper headlines projected on the screen, some sound effects, and some audience participation (and don’t think that hiding in the back row is going to keep you safe). Some of the audience members recruited to play Chaplin’s family and other figures get brief whispered instructions, or read from short scripts, but for the voice of HUAC’s Senator Joe McCarthy, Cole uses an audio recording to more properly convey the villainy.

Smile is enormous fun, though I hadn’t expected the level of audience participation, dancing, or striptease (but no nudity). The remaining performance is almost sold out, but see it if you can.