I am having many love for Blue Man...
Sep. 26th, 2024 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris...I say cuchi-cuchi too!
Twenty years ago, on my first trip to Boston to see Emerson while we were still long-distance, on the day after his birthday we went to see the Blue Man Group. (I wrote about it at the time, and used the same gag. Good, good.) They're a performance art troupe of three mute blue-painted individuals, this time accompanied by a somewhat more human-looking female multi-instrumentalist known as the Rockstar. There is a great deal of drumming on distinctive, often somewhat improvised and/or industrial, percussion, there's a fair bit of dancing, a handful of short videos while the set is being changed and plenty of silly physical comedy, much of which involves audience members co-opted with an assumption of consent, but the atmosphere is very sympathetic towards participants throughout.
Many of the highlights of the show decades ago remain highlights today. A lot of the drumming remains as do some of the most impressive physical stunts. Much of the rest has changed, keeping up with the times somewhat, and there was even a little local humour, for the show was in town only for a week as it tours five British cities plus Paris, playing 1-2 shows a day for five days before moving on. Seven cities, I believe, have permanent productions aside from the shows on the road. I'm pretty strongly convinced that the touring productions are inherently a little more tame, somehow, not least as you can't customise a theatre for a week to nearly the same extent that you can when you're going to be staying there for longer; if you have the choice, I'd recommend the permanent production over a touring show.
If you know anything else about the Blue Man Group, it may well be that they are famous not just for their drumming but for drumming on drums covered with liquid paint that splashes dramatically. To this end, they provide the front few rows of the audience with plastic ponchos to wear to protect their clothes. In practice, I can confirm that (at least in the touring version of the show) they weren't really necessary, save for a few seconds of a water hose being gently fired into the front row.
I'd long held an ambition to go back and see the Blue Man Group again some day, ideally sitting in this poncho section. When I saw an advert for the tour on a poster in an Underground station, I decided to have a look... and found that the London Palladium shows had a smattering of tickets going. One of the shows had a single seat in, more or less, the centre of the front row of the stalls. I took this as a sign that it was meant to be and booked the seat.
The approach I took to the show was... an unconventional one. I knew to expect the poncho, but decided to eschew it. Additionally, I decided to purchase some white (well, cream) jeans and a brand new white shirt, on which I painted the words "PAINT ME" in fabric paint. I was very hopeful that the shirts might get... decorated as evidence of the splattering paint. On balance, this was a rather self-centred move, putting it as kindly towards myself as I possibly could - very occasionally you'd see video footage of parts of the audience from the performers' perspective, and you could see the whole of the front few rows in identical blue ponchos except for me looking Very Very White and sticking out clearly. I don't think I spoiled anyone's experience, but I may have damaged the aesthetic.
The show was a lot of fun. As discussed, the ponchos were very much surplus to requirements, with only really one audience member getting particularly painty - someone is pulled out from the audience, dressed in a white boiler suit and a welding mask, then painted thoroughly blue (and their outline spray-painted pink). Maybe they're a stooge, maybe the backstage footage is another video rather than being as live as it purports, maybe it's for real. Along with a guy next to me who I had never previously met, at one point we were gestured to stand up and dance (from in front of our seats, rather than on the stage) in a few specific and ridiculous fashions for ten seconds or so, then swap seats with each other in order to set up a bigger-scale gag a bit later. Partly because we were doing so with our backs to the audience, partly because of the atmosphere, this was a very easy and enjoyable way to play along.
The only other way in which I might have inadvertently stood out was at the very end. The whole of the audience were invited to stand to dance and applaud, then the lights went down. We called for an encore and received one, but it turns out that when the lights went down, most of the audience decided to sit down. I didn't realise this and was still standing when the Blue Men came back out for their encore, not realising this for, I don't know, maybe twenty seconds after at least some of the lights went back up. Hopefully my front-and-centre position won't have blocked anyone's view - seems unlikely in context.
The highlight, and it was a tiny little thing, was that at one break between scenes just before the applause, while the lights were down but we were standing, a Blue Man came to the front of the stage and quickly and silently gave me a delightful double handprint on my shirt. This was masterfully handled - it must have been clear to them that I had wanted this, with my shirt explicitly inviting them to paint me - and yet they found a way to give it to me without drawing attention to me or spoiling anybody else's experience. What absolute pros and what a perfect souvenir.
Four and a half stars out of five, of which half a star was for the double handprint. You'd probably enjoy it just as much as you'd expect you would, or wouldn't. Looking forward, already, to doing it all again in another twenty years' time.
BEFORE
IMMEDIATELY AFTER
AFTER
Twenty years ago, on my first trip to Boston to see Emerson while we were still long-distance, on the day after his birthday we went to see the Blue Man Group. (I wrote about it at the time, and used the same gag. Good, good.) They're a performance art troupe of three mute blue-painted individuals, this time accompanied by a somewhat more human-looking female multi-instrumentalist known as the Rockstar. There is a great deal of drumming on distinctive, often somewhat improvised and/or industrial, percussion, there's a fair bit of dancing, a handful of short videos while the set is being changed and plenty of silly physical comedy, much of which involves audience members co-opted with an assumption of consent, but the atmosphere is very sympathetic towards participants throughout.
Many of the highlights of the show decades ago remain highlights today. A lot of the drumming remains as do some of the most impressive physical stunts. Much of the rest has changed, keeping up with the times somewhat, and there was even a little local humour, for the show was in town only for a week as it tours five British cities plus Paris, playing 1-2 shows a day for five days before moving on. Seven cities, I believe, have permanent productions aside from the shows on the road. I'm pretty strongly convinced that the touring productions are inherently a little more tame, somehow, not least as you can't customise a theatre for a week to nearly the same extent that you can when you're going to be staying there for longer; if you have the choice, I'd recommend the permanent production over a touring show.
If you know anything else about the Blue Man Group, it may well be that they are famous not just for their drumming but for drumming on drums covered with liquid paint that splashes dramatically. To this end, they provide the front few rows of the audience with plastic ponchos to wear to protect their clothes. In practice, I can confirm that (at least in the touring version of the show) they weren't really necessary, save for a few seconds of a water hose being gently fired into the front row.
I'd long held an ambition to go back and see the Blue Man Group again some day, ideally sitting in this poncho section. When I saw an advert for the tour on a poster in an Underground station, I decided to have a look... and found that the London Palladium shows had a smattering of tickets going. One of the shows had a single seat in, more or less, the centre of the front row of the stalls. I took this as a sign that it was meant to be and booked the seat.
The approach I took to the show was... an unconventional one. I knew to expect the poncho, but decided to eschew it. Additionally, I decided to purchase some white (well, cream) jeans and a brand new white shirt, on which I painted the words "PAINT ME" in fabric paint. I was very hopeful that the shirts might get... decorated as evidence of the splattering paint. On balance, this was a rather self-centred move, putting it as kindly towards myself as I possibly could - very occasionally you'd see video footage of parts of the audience from the performers' perspective, and you could see the whole of the front few rows in identical blue ponchos except for me looking Very Very White and sticking out clearly. I don't think I spoiled anyone's experience, but I may have damaged the aesthetic.
The show was a lot of fun. As discussed, the ponchos were very much surplus to requirements, with only really one audience member getting particularly painty - someone is pulled out from the audience, dressed in a white boiler suit and a welding mask, then painted thoroughly blue (and their outline spray-painted pink). Maybe they're a stooge, maybe the backstage footage is another video rather than being as live as it purports, maybe it's for real. Along with a guy next to me who I had never previously met, at one point we were gestured to stand up and dance (from in front of our seats, rather than on the stage) in a few specific and ridiculous fashions for ten seconds or so, then swap seats with each other in order to set up a bigger-scale gag a bit later. Partly because we were doing so with our backs to the audience, partly because of the atmosphere, this was a very easy and enjoyable way to play along.
The only other way in which I might have inadvertently stood out was at the very end. The whole of the audience were invited to stand to dance and applaud, then the lights went down. We called for an encore and received one, but it turns out that when the lights went down, most of the audience decided to sit down. I didn't realise this and was still standing when the Blue Men came back out for their encore, not realising this for, I don't know, maybe twenty seconds after at least some of the lights went back up. Hopefully my front-and-centre position won't have blocked anyone's view - seems unlikely in context.
The highlight, and it was a tiny little thing, was that at one break between scenes just before the applause, while the lights were down but we were standing, a Blue Man came to the front of the stage and quickly and silently gave me a delightful double handprint on my shirt. This was masterfully handled - it must have been clear to them that I had wanted this, with my shirt explicitly inviting them to paint me - and yet they found a way to give it to me without drawing attention to me or spoiling anybody else's experience. What absolute pros and what a perfect souvenir.
Four and a half stars out of five, of which half a star was for the double handprint. You'd probably enjoy it just as much as you'd expect you would, or wouldn't. Looking forward, already, to doing it all again in another twenty years' time.
BEFORE
IMMEDIATELY AFTER
AFTER
(no subject)
Date: 2025-01-11 09:58 pm (UTC)