Marcel to tour

Press, 3 February 1982, Page 22

Marcel to tour

NZPA staff correspondent London The world’s foremost mime artist, Marcel Marceau, and the Royal Shakespeare Company will tour New Zealand later this year. Marceau was last seen by New Zealand audiences nearly nine years ago and now plans a return tour after many requests from New Zealand. Mr Derek Glynn, who is arranging the tour, said the French mime artist wanted to come later this year and was “trying to fit it in between his commitments as the director of the Inter-

national School of Mime in France.” . In September the Royal Shakespeare Company with its comedy, “Educating Rita,” which has now played over 600 performances in the West End, will tour New Zealand and Australia with an all-Australian cast. At the moment the tour hinges on the availability of theatres. The tour will probably start in Auckland and finish at Invercargill, with stops in Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. “This would be a real tour, of about four or five weeks, only of New Zealand and not

latched on to the end of an Australian tour,” said Mr Glynn. In addition to the shows it is also hoped that Marceau will make some television commercials. “You have to do commercials to get the most public interest in the shortest space of time,” said Mr Glynn. Mr Glynn praised the standard of facilities available in New Zealand for touring players. “The only difficulty is getting the sequence of dates in one city after the other so that you do not have to backtrack too much,” he said.