Putting on Air at OCPAC

Ah, air--that critical but sadly overlooked commodity. On any given day, how many of us will go about sucking in oxygen, blowing out birthday candles or admiring kites flitting in the breeze without ever giving air a second thought?

Luckily, there are guys like Fred Garbo to show us the error of our ways. With his traveling Fred Garbo Inflatable Theater Co., Garbo gets air right in our face, not only suspending our disbelief but lifting it over our heads and even whacking it around the auditorium.

Working with designer George York and hundreds of yards of rip-stop nylon, Garbo has developed dozens of brightly colored, air-filled characters to populate a 70-minute family show that is alternately hilarious, bizarre and oddly touching. The show, which features Garbo, Brazilian ballerina Daielma Santos and some 20 inflatables, will be presented twice Sunday in the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Segerstrom Hall as the grand finale of the 1998 Imagination Celebration, a three-week, countywide spree of family-oriented performances, exhibits and activities.

The pair also will offer a brief preview Saturday at 1:30 p.m. on the main stage of the Imaginarium, a free, two-day outdoor arts festival held this weekend adjacent to OCPAC in Costa Mesa. Tickets to Garbo’s Sunday performances may be purchased at the box office or by phone through Ticketmaster.

Come to think of it, air is getting a lot of play in the Imagination Celebration’s closing weekend. Meggopolis, a 110-foot-long walk-through inflatable by Englishman Alan Parkinson, highlights this year’s Imaginarium. One of three large-scale inflatables that Parkinson tours around the world, Meggopolis made its U.S. debut at the 1996 Imaginarium. It costs $1 to wander shoeless through its luminous tunnels and caverns.

(For crowd-control reasons, Meggopolis tickets must be purchased in advance at the Imaginarium information booth; visits are limited to 15 minutes. An encouraging note for those who toured the structure in 1996: Parkinson has revamped the ventilation system to make temperatures more comfortable and added music to further enhance the experience.)

The 1998 Imaginarium--dubbed “Arts in the Air”--also will feature kite “ballets” by the Airwest Flight Team and performances by David Forel, a storyteller who makes and uses balloon creatures to animate his tales. Three stages will host performances ranging from puppetry to Afro-Caribbean dances to children’s choruses, and there will be workshops where children can try their hands at origami, kite-making, playing a wind instrument or other skills.

In the Inflatable Theater Co.’s show, Garbo and Santos do a splendid job balancing his skills as a gymnast, juggler and physical comedian with her grace, athleticism and sly humor. Together they form an effective supporting cast for the inflatables, whether they are propelling them, juggling them, reacting to them or inhabiting them.

“All our pieces are like human living cartoons,” Garbo said during a recent phone interview from his home in Norway, Maine, where he touched down en route to California and his next stop, a seven-week tour of Japan. “They do something that surprises the audience.”

What makes the characters so engaging--and the resulting show so effective--is the evolution they go through under Garbo and Santos’ tutelage. Although it’s difficult to describe without giving too much away, we can say that in Fred Garbo’s Inflatable Theater, things rarely stay in their original forms or behave in an expected manner for long. Powered by Garbo and Santos, the inflatables seem to have more changeable emotions than the average teen.

“The pieces are about how you get there,” said Garbo, a seasoned showman whose career includes stints with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and eight years inside the Barkley the Dog suit on “Sesame Street.”

One memorable sequence features the Red Cube, a room-sized inflatable with a personality to match and a taste for stray sneakers. A little shy at first, the cube warms to the spotlight until it is rolling end over end, bouncing like a superball and eventually storming the audience. Once there, it cozies up to front-row viewers and purloins at least one piece of footwear. If it had a face, you would swear it was smirking.

BE THERE

Fred Garbo’s Inflatable Theater Co. performs Sunday at 1 and 4 p.m. in the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $8. (714) 556-2787 or (714) 740-2000.