Subjects and Objects Speak for Mummenschanz

There is something deeply satisfying about a huge sphere, draped in flowing silk, bobbing and floating like a jellyfish on a darkened stage. It’s like the dawn of something odd, and it can lift your spirit.

And it wasn’t the only salutary image at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Wednesday night during Mummenschanz’s “Parade,” a retrospective celebrating 25 years of the Swiss mask-and-mime troupe. Mummenschanz deals in kinesthetic images that are always dawning, whether they are giant balloons tossed by creatures that look like heating ducts on a holiday, or people with pipe-cleaner heads that they shape into expressions.

The company members--founders Floriana Frassetto and Bernie Schurch, and John Charles Murphy--work in black unitards, a variety of cushy, clever bits of foam and fabric, and a silence broken constantly by clusters of audience laughter and ineluctable “ahhhhs.” The laughs and ahhhhs come often as these abstract forms turn out to have human emotions: a large silvery sack shrinks shyly; a cheeky tube flirts with a stack of boxes; bits of flying carpet seem to caress, then fly from commitment.

Not all the vignettes work equally well--familiar characters whose heads are replaced by rolls of toilet paper, memo pads or wads of taffy get bogged down in muzzy mime “dialogues.”

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But some scenes always sing: slinky sculptures that strut and hula; buoyant, pillowy forms that resemble sumo wrestlers on the moon.

It’s a bit like seeing your sofa cushions suddenly become Baryshnikov--only more approachable, because their technique seems less like his and more like yours.

In a curtain speech, Frassetto said that rumors of this being Mummenschanz’s last tour are greatly exaggerated. She alluded to some financial restructuring and a hiatus of a few years but promised that the group would be back.

* Mummenschanz performs today and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. $16-24. The Saturday and Sunday shows are sold out. (714) 854-4646.