Mummenschanz, celebrating its 40th year as the world’s premiere Mask Theater company, gives us a wonderful experience in imagination. They perform as the personification of inanimate objects including giant hands, insects, a Slinky, bugs, bags, giant figures, snakes, a flame dance, a medley of rectangle and square and circle, dancing objects, a brilliant section of sticks that conflict and then join, faces constructed by cords, and two holdovers from previous years: toilet paper features on a face and – the peak of their art for me – clay masks that two of the troupe sculpt and re-sculpt into people, and morph into animals.
Two Black Light sections give us a lovely visual tangent, helping make this a highly developed, fascinating show. It’s hard to describe the magic the performers bring to the stage. I’d have sworn there were about eight people in the show, and it’s a surprise when we learn at the bows there are only four. They are veterans with the bodies of Slinkies and the timing of trapeze artists. Miss this, and you miss some of the highest level of innovation in visual communication that exists on this planet-- and, being purely visual, Mummenschanz has played in 80 countries and finds resonance in audiences of all ages.
