Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
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by Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink,
directed by Marcus Miller and Blue Man Group,
John Labatt Centre, London, July 6-7;
Hamilton Place, Hamilton, July 8-9;
Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto, July 19-30;
National Arts Centre, Ottawa,
December 27, 2011-January 1, 2012
Blue Man Group has returned to Toronto and their show is bigger and more high-tech than ever. If you saw their sit-down show at the Panasonic Theatre that ran 2005-07, you may be surprised that the “new” show contains about 80% of the same material as the older show. The primary change is that what had been done using television and video is now done on multiple large LED screens that can fill the entire proscenium opening. Blue Man Group started out in 1991 as performance art that satirized performance art. Now that it works on such a large scale, it has left its former cultish, Off-Broadway incarnation behind and now feels more like a three-man CIrque de Soleil. Though English is used in signs and voice-overs, the Blue Men communicate entirely through mime so it’s a show to please both English and non-English speakers alike.
As usual the blue-headed men can be any three of six performers, in this case Kallen Allmandinger, Kirk Massey, Peter Musante, Patrick Newton, Michael Rahhal or Bhurin Sead. The show begins with the BMG’s signature paint drumming where paint is poured onto the surface of drums, its splashes accentuating every drum-stroke and making what is aural visual. They hold a canvas over the splashes and create a painting. The next sequence is also a standard. One Blue Man amazingly catches paint balls thrown halfway across the stage in his mouth and then spews the colours onto a spinning canvas while the other catches marshmallow-sized pieces of clay, also thrown long-distance, but keeps stuffing them in his mouth. He does this far past when you think his mouth is full until he disgorges it all on a stand and puts a price tag in front of it.
These routines reflect BMG’s initial satire of performance art and action painting. The next sequence shows them updating an old sequence to expose their new object of satire. A large rectangular LED screen descends and turns into a “GiPhone”. The Blue Men, in their familiar personae as kindly aliens trying to understand our world, comically attempt to figure out what this thing is and how to use it. Two more descend so they each have one. When they each press the book app, we have a new-and-improved version of their “information overload” routine from the previous show where all three screen show different texts that we have to speed read to appreciate. Making fun of how technology has decreased our ability to concentrate, the three books all announce time out to play a game. The reward for the game in a box of Cap’n Crunch. The three discover that they can crunch on the cereal in different ways to make music. This is also an old routine but now the LED screens enhance it by displaying the audio waveforms of the crunches.
Pressing the various app buttons causes all sorts of bizarre happenings until one screen becomes a mirror, the second a magnifier and the third a sim-like enhancer. The interaction of the live Blue Men with their virtual counterparts is as hilarious as it is extraordinarily precise.
What follows is mostly a series of favourite routines where the LED screens replace the video monitors of the older show to make the visuals more suitable for a large auditorium. We have the video journey down the alimentary canal of an audience member; the dinner of Twinkies with a partially willing volunteer which is still the funniest part of the whole show; the video on the world as interconnected by plumbing; the instructions on “Rock Concert Movements” for the whole audience; and, of course, the Blue Men experimenting with their “Drumbone” made out of siding sections of PVC pipe and all three using paddles to play a the tuned PVC pipe “organ”. This time their song catalogue runs all the way from Beethoven’s “Für Elise” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”.
Some past routines are no longer effective. Before, the Blue Men used to make music by putting their heads in television screen and banging them against the frames. With LED screens this doesn’t work mostly because the magnified heads are now so clearly not those of the live Blue Men in front of us. The “Human Paintbrush” routine is a throwback to the satire of action painting and now doesn’t fit with the show’s new emphasis on technology.
Amidst these favourites there are four notable additions. The sequence involving two two-dimensional creatures trying to become three-dimensional is now prefaced with text messages between the two in a satire the inanities of texting. The motivation of the two-dimensionals is now to try to have a “real” conversation face-to-face. A great idea, borrowed perhaps from the Italian director Giorgio Strehler, is to have one of the Blue Men pull the power plug for the show. This plunges the audience and the stage into pitch blackness for several minutes. Strehler used this ploy to give the audience a moment to contemplate the artifice of a play. The Blue Men use it to reinforce their theme of our over-dependence on technology. A third welcome idea, growing from the dated “Rock Concert Movements”, is instructions for the audience on how to dance, specifically in how to shake your booty, although the LED screens show every possible (and improbable) word for “booty” before hitting on the right one.
The final idea, perhaps borrowed from Slava’s Snowshow, is the use of six gigantic plastic balls, lit from within by radio-controlled colour-changing lights, that the Blue Men first play as instruments and then shoot out into the audience for a sort of communal playtime. This concluding sequence captures the essence of Blue Man Group is all about. Just as they are innocents looking with fresh, curious eyes our world, the beautiful sight of rising and falling coloured balls that we strive with others to hit into the air brings out the innocent in everyone as the auditorium is transformed into a magical playground.
At its frequent best this what a Blue Man group show does--it makes us look at the world with new eyes. In moving from its satire on art to its satire on technology, the Blue Men change their focus from skewering pretension to reminding us that we should control technology and not let it control us. We should not forget how to interact with one another face-to-face--even if that other face is blue.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Blue Man Group National Tour. ©2011 Paul Kolnik.
For Tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.
2011-07-21
Blue Man Group National Tour