The local mime Trent Arterberry gave a solo performance Saturday that managed to warm the audience even with the nearly arctic temperature in the outdoor Publick Theatre, next to the Charles River.

A proven crowd-pleaser, Arterberry is highly skilled at what he does, which ranges between descriptive mime and interpretive dance, and sometimes combines the two. The introduction saw Arterberry, an angular blond in his usual whiteface and tight-fitting outfit, frantically trying to align his head with his body, both of which refused to stay put. The audience responded happily, as they did toward the end of the program when the artist enlisted one of the number to perform opposite him in a piece about waitering called “Dinner for Two.” After that piece he got several members of various ages to participate in a conga line around the theater. Not my idea of audience involvement (give me “Marat/Sade” any day), but silly, harmless fun.

Then in “Desperado” one saw flashes of silent film clowns Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin as Arterberry played a comically self-regarding cowboy in all the stock situations — a card game, a shoot-out, girl-chasing, riding a horse — and parodying the clichés even as he aped them. Arterberry is funny without being cute, and like a cartoonist his lines of gesture and movement are broad but precise and speedy as a whiplash. He moves outrageously fast, but not so fast that the movement slurs.

“Black Magic” was an eye-catching if familiar circus trick consisting of phosphorescent strips of tape on a darkened stage. Of all the numbers, “War” was closest to dance, a series of portentous ritual gestures enacted under a red light. The evening’s one gem was a satirical sketch called “TV” in which the mime hilariously alternated between playing television personalities, including Julia Child, and a very mindless consumer.