The Script

His  life was theater. He was conceived and then born into the shabby Musical Halls of London. His childhood was a nightmare by Dickens. His adolescence was a Fred Karno knockabout vaudeville farce. His young manhood was a Mack Sennett chase, and his very private haunted dreams of love and loss were the bittersweet sadness of an Oscar Wilde fairy tale.

And so, this is how to tell the story of Charlie - on a theatrical stage of Charlie's imagination, in the language of the particular theatrical style of each era in his life, from his conception and birth to his apparent triumph in his early twenties as The Funniest Man in the World. His mother's desperate struggle and final madness is a charming ballad sung and danced by a piquant soubrette. His father's descent into whiskey and death is the rousing knees-up hoorah of a vaudeville turn. The terror and pain of the workhouse and the orphan asylum is a Victorian drama complete with pompous Gilbertian autobiography. And above all, Charlie's wistful and doomed pursuit of a love that was always different, and yet always the same, follows the developing styles of his art.

It is never an exact imitation or recreation of a given Chaplin performance, but the life, the memories, the turning points are presented in the appropriate performance style to show how art and theatrical truth, the genius of comedy develop from the nature of memory, pain and tragedy. 

— Ernest Kinoy