Video: Ethan Slater Was Inspired to Write Marcel on the Train After Googling 'Charlie Chaplin Jewish'

The Wicked actor plays the famous French mime in the new play at Classic Stage Company.

February 11, 2026 By Diep Tran, Jeffrey Vizcaíno

Years ago, Ethan Slater was researching silent film comedians when he stumbled upon an interesting factoid about Charlie Chaplin. "There's this whole thing about him being, and I put this in air quotes, ‘accused of being Jewish,'" says Slater. After typing "Charlie Chaplin Jewish" into Google, says Slater, “it led me to the story of Marcel Marceau. Before he became the world’s most famous mime, he was just a 20-year-old in Southern France in 1943, and he joined the French resistance and saved nearly 100 Jewish children.”

Slater then called his friend Marshall Pailet, to see if Pailet thought Marceau would be a great idea for a play. Now that show, Marcel on the Train, is currently running at Classic Stage Company Off-Broadway until March 22.

The play takes place entirely on a moving train, as Pailet is trying to sneak a group of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied France to the free Swiss border. Explains Pailet, who co-wrote and is directing the play, "In order to keep them quiet, he would do little bits to entertain them…it’s theorized that those became the foundation of his act.” See the two, and the show's cast, discuss the play with Playbill's Jeffrey Vizcaíno in the video above.

Even though Slater has been working on the play since 2018, he's shaken by how newly relevant it has become in light of the ICE raids around the country. But the message of Marcel on the Train remains the same, says the Wicked film actor: "Nobody should be hunted by soldiers or police, but certainly not children.”