Jos Houben & Marcello Magni
MARCEL – free screening

"Irresistibly funny, liberating, absurd and touching… two great comic performers"

Le Monde

Théâtre de Complicité founder members, Jos Houben and Marcello Magni opened LIMF‘16 with a masterclass in comic performance, produced by Peter Brook’s famous Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. In Marcel, they are a brilliant double act: Houben, the tall, brisk figure of authority putting the shorter, Magni, through a series of demanding physical and mental tests that must be passed to gain, or perhaps retain, qualifications whose significance remain a mystery. As the tests become more arduous, so Magni’s need to take short cuts becomes more pressing and ingenious.

In a tender and blissfully funny exploration of the perils of ageing, these two distinguished performers revisit their early days with Complicité in celebrating the art of physical comedy and the beauty of the ‘gag’. Jos and Marcello met as students at the Ecôle Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Prior to Marcel they last appeared on stage in London together in Peter Brook’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Fragments, in 2008.

"A gag is a poem. It makes us laugh by the effect of surprise, the virtuosity of the performance and the humanity it reveals. It frees us from day-to-day predictability, celebrates the art of the actor in close complicity with his audience and reveals the universality of our physical condition"
Jos Houben and Marcello Magni

This online screening is dedicated to the memory of Marcello Magni, who left us too early in September 2022.