Real Kato Blog: Performance Art: Blue Man Group

The Blue Man Group provides a peculiar mix of performance art, percussion, and comedy, making for a unique and interesting show.

The Blue Man Group (at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas) is different from any other show I've seen. If I had to compare it to something, I'd say it was as if Stomp, Mummenschanz, comedian Heywood Banks had been fused together with a Gallagher's Sledge-O-Matic.

The performers, as one might expect, are blue; they seem to be covered in blue paint. This gives them an alien appearance, and they exploit that fact; their show is, at heart, an innocent exploration of society and technology, seen through naive and unbiased eyes. It's easy to miss this, though, with all the paint splashing around, the percussion music, and the flashing colored lights.

One wonders if that's the whole point, though: to make a statement on how we, as a society, miss the underlying message as we pay attention to the glitzy exterior. Given that 95% of the audience will rave about how funny the blue men were, or how much they enjoyed the music and the lights, that statement would be right on the mark. The joke is on us, and that makes this show more brilliant than anyone would have guessed.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

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