Blue Man Group

The category-busting Blue Man Group is easier to watch and enjoy than to describe. In essence, three wide-eyed men, with bald heads covered in blue paint, go onstage to present a 90-minute, multi-media show. Is it theater? Is it a rock concert? Is it a comedy club? Yes and no.

It’s a unique blend of rock music, high-tech projections, audience participants and Blue Man Group’s special brand of humor. For those who have seen the show elsewhere, perhaps in New York or Las Vegas, Blue Man Group doesn’t disappoint.

The members of Blue Man Group display their musical chops by pummeling handmade instruments made from PVC tubes. This is a Blue Man trademark, and it is represented well in the touring version. Another Blue Man signature “bit” involves a series of snare drums that spurt gushers of colorful paint.

The show is a series of vignettes, each seemingly designed to impart a particular message to the audience. The most elaborate of these vignettes involves gigantic smart phones or electronic tablets. The towering tablets descend from above. At first, the Blue Men seem puzzled by these devices. They examine the screens and randomly tap on different apps. Once they get the hang of this, they discover different ways of appearing on the screen. Eventually, the Blue Men become “trapped” in these electronics, as if to say that we are all being “consumed” by this latest technological toy. The late Steve Jobs would probably not be amused.

Blue Man Group imparts social messages, but it also allows a sense of childlike wonder to creep into the theater. The Blue Men do not speak, so everything that happens is transmitted through facial expression and body language. The Blue Men are harmless and devoid of emotion. They appear to be lost in the environment around them. One can laugh at their antics as they try to grasp each challenge that comes their way. When they fetch an audience member to participate in one of their vignettes, it adds a bit of spontaneity to the performance.

The G-rated tour is somewhat customized for each venue. In Milwaukee, for instance, the Blue Man Group goes from playing its own rhythms on the PVC pipes to a brief rendition of a Lady Gaga song. (Of course, Lady Gaga is never mentioned.) However, each Blue Man disappears behind the PVC contraption, only to emerge with a goofy hat that loosely resembles those worn by Lady Gaga. Except the third “hat” turns out to be a Wisconsin cheese head, often worn at Green Bay Packers football games. The crowd roars its appreciation.

The one area in which the Blue Man Group tour falls short is its finale. In Las Vegas, a cleverly designed paper roll literally rolls down the rows of seats, from back to front. It bounces over the audiences’ heads. In the tour, a half-dozen gigantic, color-changing spheres bounce into the audience. Simultaneously, a series of onstage “cannons” shoot confetti and colorful waving streamers toward the audience. It makes a lot less mess than one recalls from a previous Las Vegas performance, but it isn’t as much fun, either.