Tom Lynch

I thought that I was the last person in the world to see Blue Man Group.

Something I never would have agreed to see without apprehension, I am suckered in to this now-mainstream performance art by the requirements of a Christmas gift. The casually dressed audience at the Briar Street Theater anxiously shifts in their chairs, adjusts the coats hidden underneath them, and settles, waiting for the Twinkie and marshmallow fun they've seen before.

"Did they have those tubes last time?" the fortyish woman next to me says to her beau in a Southern accent. The show begins and the blue men search the crowd for a volunteer. The audience knows that this is coming, they expect it by hiding their faces before the performers even finish the previous bit. Latecomers arrive in the middle of the show and the performance halts. A siren blares, the lights come up, and they're broadcast on a projection screen. The audience chuckles, but want a new circus trick. Everyone has seen the show before and they want something different.

People wait in line to take pictures with the blue men after the show. A woman yells, "Can I touch your face?" and a blue-soaked actor complies silently. "It doesn't change," another man observes as he helps his wife into her coat. Apparently not.

(2004-01-13)

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