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The Blue Man Group
The Blue Man Group could not be more appropriately named. They're Men. And they're Blue.So if you head to see the show for yourself, you can be pretty sure that you'll be seeing a group of men, and that they will be blue. Other than that, it's very hard to know what to expect. Having seen the show, you can see why their promotion gives away little of what they do - it's entirely about the experience.
An accurate description of the show could run along the lines of 'a series of set pieces that combine musicality, dance, lighting, projection, prop design, digital media and audience participation that enthral the audience with no plot, characterisation, or other narrative devices getting in the way', but I'll bet that that description leaves you none the wiser.
3 vignettes…
#1
Two blue men are onstage wearing black bodysuits. Red led piping along the edges of the suits mean you can see two outlined stickmen, moving theatrically at either side of the stage. So far, so mime in the dark. Suddenly they somersault ten metres into the air and begin to fly around the stage. Perhaps they're on wires you think. Then they proceed to utterly defy the laws of physics that must apply, even to actors in a wired harness - swooping around the upper reaches of the stage. 'It must be a laser projection' you think. Then suddenly the Blue Men in black are walking around the front of the stage, undoubtedly real and physical. Sometime after the show you figure out that they'd started off with actors in led-piped suits, halfway through imperceptibly switching to laser projection, only to switch back again to actor mode. It takes a while to figure out all this, later as during this piece, the audience sit rapt with awe at the sheer impossibility of what they've just seen.
#2
Three men with blue heads stand in separate, back-lit cubicles, each with a differently-tuned drum. They play alternating beats, which in sequence, play a simple melodic tune. Not hugely exciting you might think, but with the simple addition of a squirt of coloured water (or paint) to the skin of the drum, against dramatic back- lighting, each drumbeat becomes a small explosion of colour creating a real-life, 3D version of the cut tight to audio visuals you see on the more experimental corners of MTV.
#3
Three men carry a contraption made from plastic tubing. One starts banging his end of the tube producing a regular pitched tone. One of his colleagues suddenly pulls the tube out, which drops the pitch by a few tones (there's the physics again). They pull the same trick at the other end, and before you know it, they're gallivanting around an octave, eventually resolving around a couple of familiar melodies.
While the visual effects are technically impressive, and aspects of the show (particularly the 'wet' sections) resemble a science lesson with a lysergically inspired trio of teachers, the whole thing is packed with laughs, as the wordless interactions of the Blue Men involve the audience mostly on an emotive, and occasionally, a physical level; indeed, the first three rows of the audience are given ponchos to protect them from some of the show's messier, wetter excesses.
The entire spectacle is soundtracked by a live band on a high platform, wearing black bodysuits with freakish skeletal outlines. Reminiscent of the house band in cult vampire flick 'Dusk til Dawn', the pounding rock-ish sounds provide something more than background music - it's a key element of the show.
This brief description has captured only a sliver of what is a unique, theatrical experience. To see it in a West End theatre is to understand why there are successful productions running in New York, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas and Berlin. Clearly, Billy Crystal's Spinal Tap character was right - Mime is money.
The mind boggles as to what it will be like to see them in the unconventional setting of The Big Chill's Media Mix tent. A festival first for The Blue Man Group, and an absolute treat for Big Chillers.
Make sure you catch at least one of their two sets at Eastnor.
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Blue Man Group - Artist profile
Written: 12th Jun, 06
Read: 3525 times
