Show reviewed:19/02/26

Show rating: Grinning with 5 stars

The life of a fringe reviewer can be hectic and unpredictable time, so sometimes you miss out on a Fringe production that gets both critical acclaim and excellent word of mouth recommendations. And then you kick yourself for missing out on it, well the 2026 Adelaide Fringe has allowed this media chick a chance at a redemption arc. Marcel Cole has created a one man performance with the show, Smile: The Story of Charlie Chaplin. 

I must admit, prior to this year, that historically and artistically, I never thought that Charlie Chaplin’s life was particularly relevant to my life. And then I saw the resurgence of Nazis; the rise of MAGA and Trump; where “fake news” is accepted as fact by many people without critical thinking skills being employed and international government being conducted by social media narratives shaped by corrupt elites. And then I went “Oh. I get it now.”

Artists have always pushed at the boundaries and challenges what are the accepted social norms of their times. Chaplin was one who interrogated dangerous ideas and push back at Hitler’s Germany. In Smile: The Story of Charlie Chaplin, Marcel has created a highly timely work using Chaplin as a metaphor for pushing back at societal perspectives on identity, politics, and the human condition in our time. He was a deeply human thinker who pushed back at the status quo in a time people were being on exterminated en masse based on a dehumanising ideological rhetoric by a white elite.

Artistically, Cole is a master of clowning and physical theatre; his use of movement to inhabit the character of Chaplin was a study in how to portray a character through choreographed mannerisms and considered code switching. He understood the cultural coding of mime and the silent film era and did the first half of the show stylistically, exploring Chaplin as a silent comedian and the last great era of silent film.

Juxtaposed, the second half of the show while as entertaining, is the active voice of Charlie Chaplin’s life and a deeply political second act with Chaplin’s opposition to Hitler and using film as a platform to pushback against the war movement. Cole knows how to engage an audience through use of props and audience participation and you could see that the crowd was really engaged and enjoying themselves. Smile: The Story of Charlie Chaplin is a must see production!