Blue Man Group
But it isn’t until you’re seated under the web of tubes that surrounds the audience that you realize Blue Man is something more than performance art. What’s the tip-off? It might be the raincoats provided to audience members in the first eight rows. It might be the digital readout that introduces special members of the audience and encourages everyone to speak to them in unison, behavior more appropriate to a wedding banquet or a baseball game than to performance art. Even the feeling in the room is different. People are talking, actually openly looking at one another and introducing themselves, comparing the headbands that stagehands are passing out to everyone. Audience members are not simply chatting, waiting for the lights to go down. They’re actively curious.
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It’s difficult to convey the sudden, wide-eyed suspension of disbelief and habitual thinking that Blue Man creates–and I don’t want to spoil any of the show’s surprises. But what makes Tubes worth the price of admission–besides its technical innovations and fast-paced whimsy–is the kind of laughter that makes you look straight into the eyes of the guy in the next row and howl, the shock of a Blue Man’s hand firmly grasping your own, the hilarious insight into the Blue Men’s hierarchy, which shifts with every scene.
