Blue Man Group
For 21 years, the New London was home to Cats, which famously turned the theatre into an environmental playground for the eponymous creatures to come to life in; now it has newly become the home to an even weirder, wilder life force in the Blue Man Group, a trio of mute (and mutating) performance artists who seem to have come from another planet to face our world with a mixture of bafflement and beguiling innocence.
Dressed entirely in black, only the whites of their eyeballs are recognisably alive; their bald heads are swathed in a kind of blue latex that renders them indistinguishable from each other. They pound out rhythms on drums and giant xylophones made of plumbing pipes, and create modern art out of catching paintballs in their mouths and spraying the contents onto canvas; at other times, the drums themselves erupt in explosions of colour as paint is poured onto them and beaten into the air.
Born a decade and a half ago in New York’s East Village (where a company continues to play at the tiny Off-Broadway Astor Place Theatre where they opened a sit-down engagement in 1991 and have remained ever since), they have gone on to become a North American phenomenon, with other permanent companies spawning in Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas and Toronto. As this quirky troupe now belatedly reaches London – in a far larger version than the one I first saw in New York – some of it remains highly individual; but some of it also now feels curiously dated. Partly, the novelty has worn off: shows like the British-born Stomp that came soon afterwards have mined similar territory of creating innovative soundscapes out of improbable objects.
But also in a far larger theatre, it also feels rather exposed. A lot of the interval-free one hour 45 minute show seems like padding, particularly the frequent attempts at audience participation. On the other hand, in a world where displays paintings made of elephant dung are deemed worthy of the Turner Prize, it’s critique of the excesses of modern art – with for instance one of the Blue Men catching marshmallows in his mouth and regurgitating them as an instant conical sculpture – is such that perhaps this show shouldn’t be at a theatre at all but put on as a permanent installation in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.
A grand finale that envelops the entire theatre in paper might give environmentalists pause, but then hopefully it is recycled afterwards. The show similarly feels recycled at times, but there’s pleasure along the way; though not, perhaps, £40 worth of pleasure, which is the price that all but the front two rows (available on the day only at £20) and premium seats (at £50) are sold at.
– Mark Shenton
