At Blue Man Group's curtain calls at the Marcus Center this week, the stagehands join the cobalt-colored performers and the band in the big long line, taking bows. You don't see techies onstage lapping up the applause very often, and their presence at the end of the 90-minute show is significant.
The three bald and mute Blue Men may be the stars, but they are completely reliant on a wizard's array of high tech flash and dazzle to make the extravaganza work. Those stagehands are mighty important.
The Blue Man Group is an entertainment phenomena that began 20 years ago in New York as something of a dialogue-free spoof of performance art. Its creators – Chris Wink, Philip Stanton and Matt Goldman – were the original performers until they left the stage to concentrate on turning their idea into an international show biz juggernaut.
Like Cirque du Soleil, BMG has multiplied and evolved in numerous directions. It has become a permanent fixture in Boston, Chicago, Orlando and Las Vegas. It currently has companies in Tokyo and Berlin.
You can even see the Blue Men on a cruise ship, the new Norwegian Epic.
Visual art and the science of vision continue to have a place in the productions, but the material has been broadened to be more of a spectacle.
Under the BMG creative umbrella, a show was created for large rock concert venues. The Marcus Center production is part of the first national Blue Man tour designed for theatrical spaces similar to Uihlein Hall.
At its most basic level, the Blue Man Group is about the old art of clowning. Think Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Lucy grappling with all of those chocolates on the conveyor belt.
Add layers of pulsating rock music and lighting, contemporary attitude, vaudevillian gags and gimmicks, and now digital technology, which didn't exist when the Blue Men first appeared, and you have an idea of what the controlled mayhem at the Marcus Center is all about.
The show, which deserves a PG rating, attracts children and teens as well as adults. Its series of sketches bounce between the clever and the sophomoric.
"Screen hopping" is a fun example of the former. The Blue Men glide back and forth between their real and digital images, which are on large rectangular screens that resemble smart phones. One of them becomes Carmen Miranda, complete with maracas, sashaying through open space and screens.
The Blue Men's historic obsession with tubes and pipes is wittily illustrated by them sliding the cylinders like trombones while pinging them with sticks. A tune results.
A vignette focused on the trio eating Twinkies with a member of the audience is expertly realized classic clowning.
An old BMG routine involving the loud consumption of Cap'n Crunch cereal out of the box is aimed straight at a kid's sense of humor, and a session of throwing dye-filled marshmallows into the mouth of a Blue Man goes on for too long.
Shooting, spewing and spraying paint and goo is another signature BMG stunt, and those who find that endlessly entertaining won't be disappointed here. The finale is capped by blowing unfurling rolls of toilet paper into the audience, and that proves one thing.
The Blue Man Group may have embraced the digital age, but you just can't beat TP-ing Uihlein Hall for laughs.
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
