Amusing and Touching, 'The Man Who Laughs' Evokes Chaplin and Keaton
Based on a heart-wounding Victor Hugo novel, “The Man Who Laughs” is an extraordinarily clever stage show. The sad tale of an orphan who has been surgically deformed, the corners of his mouth yanked up into a perpetual smile, is rivetingly rendered in the fashion of a 1920s silent-movie melodrama. Behind a screen on which “title cards” are projected and with sets and costumes colored only in b…