If you're coming to the UK with a mime show, there are several things you really ought not do. Wear a jester's hat in your publicity material. Perform in black tights. Gurn exaggeratedly. Someone should have told the Polish mime Ireneusz Krosny that the UK is notoriously sceptical of his noble art. And in most particulars, this international touring show exemplifies the Marcel Marceau-style mime that makes Brits feel like smashing their heads through an invisible pane of glass.
So why are we so averse to objects that aren't there? There's no questioning Krosny's talent at making absent things - doors, dinner guests, stairs - seem as if they're in the room with us. In his sketch The Surgeon, you can really see him carve open the unfortunate patient. In the "Boss invites you home" skit, he gets violently hauled across the floor by an imaginary dog.
Those skills are impressive and entertaining. Less so are Krosny's exaggerated gestures and facial expressions. He oversells too many of his sketches, telegraphing the comedy of each situation, and fostering that air of cloying insincerity that scares people off mime. There's no need to semaphore the physical language, nor to bombard us with intrusive sound effects. Krosny's scenes are better when subtler, as with his reactions to his boss's son's cello recital, or with the clumsy burglar setting off every alarm in the house.
The show sometimes feels like just a showcase of virtuosity. I'd love to see solo mime given the 21st-century makeover that ventriloquism, say, has received from the likes of Nina Conti. But Krosny's show could have been made in 1965. Not that that makes it bad; it ends with a highly enjoyable sketch in which a disciplinarian conductor teaches the audience how to clap The Blue Danube. But the mime renaissance may have to wait.
