BWW Reviews: BLUE MAN GROUP

The Blue Man Group tour has made a stop in Nashville this week. Tennessee Performing Arts Center hosts the inventive show, that is full of eye-popping and mouth dropping performances...or skits....or just a 90 minute, non-stop spectacle. Think I'm complete inept when it comes to trying to describe Blue Man Group? I am. But the Blue Man Group's own website says the show is "impossible to describe."

When you arrive at a Blue Man Group performance, you must get ready for something unlike anything you've ever experienced before. Part improv, part performance art, and part audience participation, Blue Man Group becomes an event that is funny, amazing, and something that is suitable for all ages. The audience members who sit in the first row (or two), wear plastic bags to keep themselves from being covered in paint, which makes up a large portion of the show. The strange, alien-like Blue Men participate with each other and with the audience, while using no language at all.

The Blue Men make music on drums and pipes, make art by painting in strange and unconventional ways, and do comedy skits using things like science and current technology to get their laughs. There are moments when the Blue Men and their show make their way into the audience, and times when the audience makes their way into the show.

Blue Man Group is accompanied by a very talented band, which appear to be skeletons due to their creative outfits and the black lights that dominate much of the show. They also are a major part of the improv for the show. At one point, they were playing a song and when they finished, an audience member yelled, "Free Bird!" and immediately the bad began to play strands of the Lynyrd Skynyrd tune. I thought for sure that was a plant in the audience, but after the show, I approached one of the band members and he confirmed that it was NOT a plant, and that they are often prepared to play tunes with no notice. Pretty amazing talent, if I do say so myself.

Very much NOT your conventional theatre piece, Blue Man Group makes for a nice change for a traditional theatre goer and makes for a great excuse to get a non-theatre goer to a live performance. The show performs at TPAC through Sunday, January 11th. You can purchase tickets by visiting their website or by calling the box office at 615-782-4040.

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