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Blue Meanies

Eye Weekly - 06-23-05
STEVE ENGLISH

Imagine Rush reworking its über-nerdy prog-opera 2112 -- in which citizens of a future technocracy overthrow a totalitarian regime through the revolutionary power of music -- into a Vegas-style geekstravaganza replete with streamers, day-glo greasepaint and pool noodles. On second thought, don't. Just fork over $60 to the Blue Man mothercorp instead and let a trio of bald, blue-headed alien mimes do the imagining for you in this colourful, kinetic and atrociously uncool car-crash of rock-concert bombast, performance-art pretension and cornball slapstick. The effect is disturbingly similar: a gleaming, corporate-sponsored slab of crass McArt.

Like any good multinational, Blue Man Inc. comes to town with its own labour woes. Sunday's premiere attracted an anti-Blue Man protest of the Blue crew's decision not to employ union workers. One speaker drew comparisons between the troupe's sketchy business practices and those of union-hatin' retail giant Wal-Mart, a parallel that would prove eerily accurate. Like Wal-Mart, the Blue Man brand -- sorry, "experience" -- is weirdly cultish to the point of intrusion. Within seconds of locating my seat, a grinning greeter offered me a tissue-paper bandana to flaunt my "Blue Man spirit." Even the bathroom provides no refuge. Here, life's most intimate moments are soundtracked by a polyphonic Blue Man jingle.

The performance itself is 100 per cent plot-free. Nothing substantive happens, but it's a noisy, energetic whiz-bang sort of nothing. For almost two hours, the Blue dudes merrily thwack at industrial piping, action-paint with theatergoers' bodies and expel semi-digested foodstuffs from their chest cavities with impassive, well-drilled precision. But the dated information-age social commentary, lame jokes and "spontaneous" audience-interaction bits wear thin quickly. Patrons easily distracted by flashing lights, loud noises and shiny objects will bust a nut over Blue Man's sensory-overload eargasm. Others, leery of elevating hi-NRG rave-rock goonery to the status of legitimate theatre, will pray for deafness. Come back, Stomp. All is forgiven.

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