GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Some things I learned watching Blue Man Group: There are many more euphemisms for “buttocks” than I ever realized existed. The simple rhythmic crunching of cereal can be comedy. The human mouth, with some effort, can hold nearly 30 standard-size marshmallows.
The indigo trio’s current touring show offers whimsy in large doses, and provides three-dimensional nourishment for eyes that tend to be battered with the two-dimensional imagery on TV, computer and smartphone displays. If there’s a loose thematic thread to Blue Man Group, it’s that active movement is undervalued in the 21st century, and passivity is an unhealthy consequence of virtual realities.
That’s the subtext of BMG’s goofy antics, which make poignant commentary about modern technology while often using said technology playfully and for the sheer joy of visual stimulation. Although large digital displays and bright neon lighting give the show a jaw-dropping wow factor, it’s compellingly ironic when a Blue Man reaches “into” a screen and pulls out a physical object. It’s a funny gag, yes, but what they do with those items is often a simple amusement on the surface, but sheds light on the complexity we tend to demand from our entertainment these days.
Case in point: some of the loudest laughs from the DeVos Performance Hall crowd Wednesday night came when one Blue Man rapidly threw a couple dozen marshmallows into another’s mouth. The second Blue Man then produced a sculpture from his orifice, deposited it on a table and put a sign on it reading, “$5,000.” Voila! Art!
The laughter from a basic monkey-see, monkey-do display may have eclipsed the marshmallow bit, however. A woman was brought from audience to stage for a kind of dinner-table experiment, where the three Blue Men sat down to eat Twinkies with her. They cut them with knife and fork, and she emulated their actions. They shared bites, and she did the same. One put a candle on the table and handed her a lighter, and when she lit it, another Blue Man blasted it with a fire extinguisher, to howls from the crowd.
Those vignettes were facile, and benefitted from the personae of the Blue Men, who don’t speak, are permanently poker-faced and approach the world with childlike curiosity. To them, a box of Cap’n Crunch cereal is not a source of pseudo-nourishment, but an opportunity to make music. Their outsider approach to technological ephemera seems to imply that communicating digitally instead of face-to-face (or voice-to-voice, for us non-mutes) is absurd. That’s why there is no fourth wall in a Blue Man Group show.
The musical bits were more visually complex, using shadows and colored lights to enhance the group’s performances, where they hammer rhythmically on complex systems of plastic piping, often backed by a four-piece rock band. The penultimate number combined the technological with the tactile: a danceclub beat and robotic voice urged the crowd to stand up and shake its derierres, booties, heinies, etc., as giant rubber balls were launched into the air and batted about amidst blasts of confetti streamers and strips of paper blown off large rolls by fans.
Blue Man Group can be simultaneously strange, adorable, cartoonish and subtly poignant. It’s sometimes inspired by classic physical comedy, but is ultimately its own unique entity, defying simple description. At one point, an animation explains the extraordinary science of visual perception, and that’s the heart of the show. You can take or leave the social commentary, but sometimes, watching a man hammer on a drumhead covered with water is fun just to see the droplets fly.