Mime Masters of Mummenschanz Return in Fine Form

In the playful and surprisingly complex world of Mummenschanz, a giant trash bag teetering on the lip of the stage can become a metaphor for world affairs. The interplay of differently shaped and colored pieces of foam can become a lesson in unity.

Or not.

Maybe, to you, the happenings onstage merely look cool. That’s fine too.

Since 1972, this Switzerland-based troupe has pursued a mode of performance that seems to embrace virtually all of the fine and performing arts. Built mostly of mime, puppetry and masked performance, it also incorporates elements of dance, theater, art and even architecture.

After a four-year absence, the troupe has returned with a new program called “Mummenschanz: Next,” which plays through Sunday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Like everything about Mummenschanz, the show’s title is simple yet evocative. The troupe spent the mid-’90s on tour with a 25th anniversary compilation program called “Parade.” “Next” is just that. Created by Bernie Schurch and Floriana Frassetto, the two surviving members of the original trio (Andres Bossard died in 1992), the show indicates where the troupe is headed. “Next” is performed with the assistance of Raffaella Mattioli and Jakob Bentsen, which rounds the troupe to an even four: two men, two women.

Enjoyable for children as well as adults, “Next” breezes along in an hour and 40 minutes, with an intermission. The first act consists of puppet-like work, with the performers clad entirely in black so they disappear behind the pieces of foam, cloth or cardboard that they manipulate. The second act involves mask-based work. Here, the performers’ bodies are visible, though their faces remain hidden.

In both acts, everyday objects become shape-shifting, anthropomorphic beings that enact playlets about the human condition. These stories play out in silence, accompanied only by the audience’s titters, gasps and laughter.

Among the playlets is a sort of sociological ballet danced by a blue square, a yellow triangle and a red circle. The puppet-like foam constructions run away from one another, return, lean on or push the others around--and finally, after much jostling, fit themselves together, to become an attractive, multicolored piece of modern sculpture. Without losing their individual character, they learn to live together in unity.

Later, a boy-meets-girl scenario makes use of rearrangeable foam masks that call to mind Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. In an “anything you can do, I can do better” sort of rivalry, the boy turns his spiky hair sideways to become a Mohawk, pulls it under his chin to become a beard or yanks it up to become a mustache--while rearranging his eyes, nose and mouth into new expressions. The girl responds in kind, twisting her pigtails and facial features.

Technical director and stage manager Francois Thouzet is an important part of the collaboration. While much of the stage remains in blackness, a subtle, gently colored palette of light is cast onto the puppets and masks to give their textures stronger relief. As a result, a pucker in an air-filled plastic bag becomes a mouth; a deepening of shadow gives different expression to a child’s plastic wheelbarrow, worn as a mask.

It’s all enormously creative, but for some reason the silence seems more oppressive than usual--even wearying. Perhaps we’ve become still more sensorily overstimulated in the past four years, which makes an immersion in this simplicity all the more valuable.

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* “Mummenschanz: Next,” Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine, today-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Sunday. $29-$35. (949) 854-4646 or Ticketmaster, (714) 740-7878.