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| Show | Did He Like It?* |
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The three-man new-vaudeville Blue Man Group pounds on just about anything it can get its azure little hands on. The loopy, gently avant-garde trio of silent performers continue with their long-running production at the Astor Place Theatre. Click here for tickets. |
Music and Marshmallows, in Sync
*By JASON ZINOMAN
Published: July 28, 2005
Blue Man Group has been around so long and played so many cities that it's easy to forget that its roots are in the New York performance art scene of the 1980's. Created by Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink, the three earless mutes glistening with blue paint performed in tiny salons and downtown spaces like La MaMa E.T.C. and P.S. 122. One of the first public appearances was when the Blue Men held a funeral for the 80's in Central Park, which, of course, was a very 80's thing to do.
In the fall of 1991, "Blue Man Group: Tubes" opened at the Astor Place Theater, ushering in an era of popular Off Broadway entertainments ("Stomp," "De La Guarda") that relied on spectacle and demanded only optional use of the brain. "Tubes" - plotless, wordless and devoid of human emotions - was radical in a way, testing the limits of commercial entertainment with a kind of high-tech vaudeville featuring video, percussion and stupid human tricks like catching a flurry of tossed marshmallows in the mouth.
The wildly successful troupe, which has now grown to about 60 Blue Men, has since done just about everything it could to erase any lingering traces of downtown hipness. Blue Men have become regular guests on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," appeared in advertisements for Intel computers and opened up shop in Las Vegas. (There are also productions in Chicago, Boston, Toronto and Berlin.)
Last year, 30 minutes of new material, most of which seems pitched at an audience of tourists and children, was added to the second half of the New York production. Blue Man has always sent up and celebrated the art world, but now the bald strangers conduct a somewhat stale satirical clinic on how to be a rock star. It includes all the basics, from how to do the classic head bob to the finer points of the one-armed fist-pump.
Besides this tutorial on rocking out, there's also a video of a dummy's guide to the history of animation, and a fantastical dancing 3-D man who looks like a crude early video game come to life. Some of the new jokes display the strain of Dad trying to act cool (adding the slang "shiznit" on an onscreen scroll is a dead giveaway), but they don't dampen the oddball mood that makes "Tubes" such a singularly strange and alluring event.
Despite its ubiquity, the Blue Man Group retains a certain mystery, which is part of its appeal. It's almost impossible to describe "Tubes" in a few sentences. It's one of the only long-running hits that audiences will see for the first time without really knowing what to expect.
As soon as you enter the booby-trapped theater, which is decked out in a tangle of tubes, propulsive tribal music adds to an ominous tone. A rotating cast of nine actors play the baffled blue men, but on the night I attended, Pete Simpson, Wes Day and Michael Rahhal were awfully in sync, performing their routines for the zillionth time with appropriate wonder. (They dropped only one marshmallow.)
One of the secrets to the success of "Tubes" is that it always seems as if there might be more to it than there actually is. Look hard enough, and you can find pointed comments about prefabricated culture and the dangers of technology.
A graduate student could have a field day, but, far more likely, her child would, since "Tubes" is a Willy Wonka fantasy for children. What preteenager doesn't want to stuff his face with marshmallows until his cheeks puff out like Dizzy Gillespie's? And only the most self-serious adult would complain about the virtuoso finale that involves an endless stream of toilet paper, creating a wonderful celebratory effect, providing a new spin on bathroom humor.
"Blue Man Group: Tubes" is at the Astor Place Theater, 434 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 254-4370.
Click here to buy tickets to Blue Man Group Off-Broadway.
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