Many French artists want to take the final bow when the curtain rings down on the Year of France in China this September.

Marc Hollogne is one of them and the "magic man" will bring something fresh to Chinese audience at Beijing's Poly Theatre on September 20 and 21 and at the Shanghai Centre Theatre on September 24.

The creator and performer of "Marciel Hallucine" calls his offering "cinema-theatre."

The Brussels-born resident of France has been developing a surreal performance art in which his fictional protagonist, Marciel, pops in and out of the action projected on a movie screen.

On the left side of the stage is a movie screen, onto which a film is projected as the action of the play unfolds. Screen and stage continue to intertwine, and riotously so, with the actors-cum-players shifting back and forth between these two parallel worlds.

After premiering in Paris in June 2003, "Marciel Hallucine" has toured France, the United States and Asia and reviewers have unanimously hailed its ingenuity and originality.

"Marciel is a virtuoso among harlequins. And a mind-boggling experience for audiences," wrote Le Figaro.

"After a few minutes, Hollogne makes most likely forget that the actor is practically the only person on stage and the rest of the cast are just two-dimensional projections on a screen," said Han Ping from the Poly Culture and Art Company Ltd.

As the opening scene unfolds, audiences see Marciel, a dandyish gentleman in a yellow-and-brown suit, haunted by fantastical dreams of a beautiful woman with tumbling dark hair and a billowing dress.

These pleasant dreams, however, start bothering Marciel when he begins seeing the woman in real life. Then things take a really disturbing turn. The woman becomes pregnant, and images of her swelling belly (and the baby within) start to drive Marciel mad. Seeing him teeter on the verge of insanity, a kindly friend advises him to see a psychiatrist. And as Marciel enters the waiting room of the psychiatrist, the show begins.

Hollogne acts almost always alone on the stage half of the set, before with perfect timing stepping seamlessly into the film to interact with the other characters, then off screen again to emerge on the live stage.

He produces moments both dramatic and comic. In the scene when the woman of Marciel's dreams lovingly strokes her pregnant stomach, a hilarious image of a foetus suddenly appears, growing larger and larger till it fills the entire screen. Slowly, this unborn child reaches out towards Marciel, who gapes in amazement at its hand which, in a nice twist, is about five times bigger than its parent's.

And because Hollogne started out as a musician, this show also features music and dance. In one scene of the film, Marciel executes a series of fancy hip-hop dance steps with three black dancers in basketball gear, all the while singing a rap song.

In another, Hollogne is dressed as Elvis Presley and performs live backed by a band. As his deep, sexy voice booms through the theatre, audiences are momentarily transported from the show to a pop concert.

He told the press that when he was young, he liked to divide the pages of his diary into three columns cinema, theatre and songs to jot down his impressions and ideas each day.

He first presented his experimental show at a small theatre in Belgium in1980.

"This show is about hallucinations and dreams. And when you dream, you don't have the same logic as you would in real life," said Hollogne.

"It probably takes time for Chinese audiences to understand the show. One thing I want to stress is that my intention is not to show off the magic techniques but to tell a story in an interesting way and express the confusions in people's hearts," he said.

(China Daily September 16, 2005)