This is what Fringe can do that mainstream theater can't. This is what theater can do that movies can't. Beautiful and funny and heart-wrenching and charming, this show is about the life of a woman played by Emmanuelle Delpech-Ramey — a mime so gifted (she has worked with Pig Iron for years) that it is hard to believe this rich story has been told without a word spoken. "Douce-amére" means "bittersweet" in French, and she, like the show, is well-named.

We watch the young woman fall in love with Martin, played by superb violinist Claude Ferrie, whose instrument is almost as expressive as Delpech-Ramey's face. They marry, raise a child who grows up (we can tell by how she bends over or stands on tiptoe to kiss him). Time passes, Martin dies, and his violin case becomes his surrogate as she sits and holds its handle as though it were his hand. Throughout, Ferrie plays, making the violin weep or speak, making its bow function as if it were a marionette stick and she his puppet. A feather duster becomes a pet bird, a phone rings and no one is there.

In old age, stooped and alone, she becomes mischievous and rushes out into the audience, snatches bags, mixes up their contents as she marvels at a bulging wallet or a bag of hard candies. There is much interaction — the night I saw it the young woman she chose as her double performed with great élan — all of it in the spirit of tenderness toward Madame Douce-Amére, whom, if we live long enough, we are likely to become. It is a show filled with empathy for old age and understanding of romantic love, expressed physically rather than verbally.

Delpech-Ramey created this show with its director, Celine Rames, who has worked in France with sign language, and with David Brick, co-director of Headlong Dance Theater and the child of deaf parents.

The simple set (designed by Ferrie) — a window in a wall that can turn on wheels to place the action inside or out — is, like the costuming (designed by Anne de Quillettes), amply suggestive of a time and place without the need for more.

Madame Douce-Amère Sept. 8, Mum Puppettheatre