Pity the poor concierge asked about Blue Man Group by a culture-craving tourist. Three guys with shiny heads the hue of huckleberries–that we know, from seeing pictures or the Intel commercials of the bits on Jay Leno. But what makes them worth those high ticket prices? What, exactly, do the Blue Men do?
Simpler, perhaps, to say what they don’t do. They don’t speak. They don’t sing. They don’t act out a plot. They don’t make you dance around at someone’s fake Italian wedding.
The Job they seem to have given themselves is the creation of exuberance. They coax innocent little you into their funhouse, bend your mind with 90 minutes of comedy music-carnival-party spectacular and send you out giddy with glee, high on art. They know you’ll come back fro more, and next time you’ll bring others.
For newcomers, much of the Blue Men’s appeal is their ability to subvert expectations, using everyday items in incongruous ways to keep us in a state of perpetual surprise. For repeat visitors, though, the flabbergast can give way to a comfortable familiarity. It’s been seven years now that the hairless, earless trio has held court on Briar Street, and over that time the show’s structure and main set pieces have remained pretty much unchanged.
In recent weeks, though, Blue Man Group creators Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton have been doing some tweaking. In the course of developing their Las Vegas edition (launched in 2000), their two music CDs and last summer’s concert tour, they brainstormed some ideas that have been implemented in the three other cities–New York, Boston and Chicago–where ensembles of actors re-create the original Blue Man show. The local revisions were officially unveiled over the weekend.
It takes a while to notice that anything’s new. The highlights of the show’s front end–the messages scrolled across the electronic signboards, the marshmallow tossing, the Cap’n Crunch chorale, the surreal Hostess snack break with an audience non-volunteer–are right where they’ve always been. The action still slows down for several percussion recitals on elaborate homemade instruments. (When the blue dudes resumed pounding on tone particular mass of PVC pipe, a few young audience members were heard blurting, “Not that again!”)
Gone is the mass sing-along of “White Rabbit,” replaced by a brief karaoke snippet from Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” (a moment that, along with a cheap sight gag about Madonna, goes too far with the pop-culture pandering). It’s part of an extended, rather pointless sequence mocking the conventions of rock ‘n’ roll. Another low-impact addition, set in an Internet café, has some good visuals and word-play that don’t add up to much. Better is a new vignette that uses animation and a window smeared with shaving cream to play with what’s real and what’s artifice.
It all builds to the show’s reliably rousing finale, a sensory bombardment of strobe light, spiraling tubes and a do-it-yourself festooning of seemingly endless paper streamers. With all the old elements still in place–right down to the exhilarating KLF soundtrack, circa 1990–it’s a communal celebration that transports everyone out of reality and momentarily to Planet Fun.
So that’s what Blue Man Group is: a crowd-pleasing, family-friendly performance art for people who don’t go to performance art and might not realize they just did.
Blue Man Group tweaks the light fantastic
