STAGE REVIEW : Zurich’s Irrepressible Mummenschanz Returns

The faceless, speechless Mummenschanz from Zurich is back in town, celebrating its 20th anniversary with irrepressible moments from its past.

The company’s three original performers (two Swiss men and an Italian woman), perform this weekend at the Wiltern Theatre, in the wake of a performance that beguiled and bedazzled more than 500 patrons in a jammed Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University on Monday night.

For those unfamiliar with Mummenschanz, mummen means game and schanz means chance . This is a show about mystery. It’s alternately sublime, hilarious, and, in the deepest and most enchanting way, disturbing.

At first, you wonder if “Mummenschanz” might be a Toon, as in Roger Rabbit. A 10-foot walking hand materializes in the aisle, pointing enormous fingers at squealing children in the audience. Then seeming images from Dr. Seuss appear. Blobs, clams and Slinkys, flabby and floppy, play with you, tease you, almost devour you.

Later, humanoid figures in black wear masks in the form of male and female electric plugs. They finally conjugate with each other and the figures pop into a blaze of light. Later still, condom-like faces rush at one another, inflating and deflating.

There’s nothing prurient here. These short, stylized sexual puns sail right over the heads of little children, who enjoy the skits for their silliness. For that matter, children can take their parents to the show and not worry about a thing.

Inanimate objects become creatures. A performer wears a briefcase for a head. Another artist (and sometimes two or all three of them) athletically cavort, apparently upside-down, inside huge foam-rubber, silvery pillows that confront one another in the air. Rolls of toilet paper are wittily animated.

In an audience participation number, a gigantic Slinky with a cavernous mouth plays bounce-the-beach-ball with delighted patrons. An awesome blimp fills the stage and threatens to consume the entire house, sinuous rolling mats uncoil in love and war, pipe cleaners become human profiles, putty faces twist into portraits of vanity.

The artists and creators (Andres Bossard, Floriana Frassetto and Bernie Schurch), who wind up their national tour next week in the Bay Area, utilize mime techniques. But, rather curiously, they choose to eschew bright physical color (except for the red beach ball). They shroud their objects in blacks, whites and grays. They wear black unitards, and the stage is dimly lit.

But perhaps this better clarifies, after all, the murky vision of a dice game going on here. Everyone, everything is mysterious, on the edge of things. Take a second look at your car’s headlights. They may be looking at you.

At the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., Saturday and Sunday, 8 p.m. Tickets: $18.50 (213) 380-5005 (213) 480-3232.