There's a reason people who've seen Blue Man Group balk at describing it to anyone who hasn't. It's not that the event was witnessed in a state of intoxication -- though the show does bear a passing resemblance to the best of the psychedelic happenings of the Sixties -- nor is it sadistic glee at contributing to the unenlightened's suspense. It's that there's so much and so many kinds of everything that even as you're watching, you want to see it again: huge, turbo-hydraulic waterspouting thingmawhatsits. Smartass printout signs issuing orders to the audience. Quasi-xylophonic Peter Max-colored organs and drumheads the size of safety nets. Pools of paint on the smaller drumheads that splash up fountains of ultraviolet spray with each hit. Surgical video-probes pushed into hapless civilian volunteers as far as possible without actual penetration. Costumes that, um, ejaculate from unexpected places at unexpected times. Synchronized chewing and creative spitting. Juggling, mime, acrobatics, action-painting, word puzzles, sing-alongs, music primal enough to make Robert Bly turn carthusian—all capped by a great, sprawling, all-encompassing finale involving the entire audience. It's like the legend of Woodstock, except you don't have to wash off afterward (BMG is the closest I've ever come to drowning in a sea of ticker-tape). All this zips by in under two hours, with only a few slow moments (the computer-animation graphics and ironospeak voiceovers became art-school cliches by 1983), in the 600-seat Briar Street space under the hostly direction of the silent and eerily-maquillaged Blue Men. The running costs for this production make for unusually high ticket prices, and it remains to be seen if the seductiveness of sensory overload proves as appealing to a second generation of steel-eared spectators as to their progenitors. I don't think I'd like to see a show like this one any more often than once a decade, but for now, well, Are You Experienced?
Opened:
October 12, 1997
Ended:
open run
Country:
USA
State:
Illinois
City:
Chicago
Theater Type:
Regional
Theater:
Briar Street Theater
Theater Address:
3133 North Halsted Street
Phone:
(773) 348-4000
Running Time:
1 hr, 45 min
Genre:
Avant-garde Comedy
Review:
Cast:
(in rep) Michael Cates, John Grady, Matt Goldman, Tahmus Rounds, Brian Scott, Phil Stanton, Kristian Thorson, Chris Wink.
Technical:
Orig Music: Larry Heineman & Ian Pai; Set: David Gallo & Lauren Helpern; Costumes: Patricia Murphy; Lighting: Matthew McCarthy; Sound: Jim Van Bergen; Video: Caryl Glaab & Dennis Diamond.
Other Critics:
THIS MONTH ON STAGE Richard Allen Eisenhardt !
Critic:
Mary Shen Barnidge
Date Reviewed:
October 1997
