What’s blue, lacks ears and is shiny all over? None other than Blue Man Group, the wildly popular performing trio known for their shows that eclectically combine music, comedy and multimedia theatrics.
The Blue Man Group company is actually comprised of a number of trios of the blue men, and regularly runs live stage shows in New York, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Oberhausen, and soon, Orlando. They added a notch in their tour belt when they performed at the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena on March 20 as part of their ‘How to be a Megastar Tour 2.0.’
The group was accompanied by a live band and lead female vocalist. Alternating between Blue Man’s original percussion and the band’s rock music, the show offered continual visual and audio entertainment.
Beginning with a montage of movie clips combining music with visuals, DJ Mike Realm, a turntablist who is touring with the group, literally opened the show with a bang. Realm’s prelude, which included music from ‘School of Rock,’ ‘Zoolander’ and ‘Charlie Brown’ mixed to various beats, creatively set the night’s decidedly off-beat atmosphere.
Blue Man Group followed with a frenzied opening demonstration of impressive percussion skills. The performance then morphed into a colorful art show, blending marshmallows and paintballs that had been launched and orally caught between the blue men and spit onto the shirts of two lucky volunteers. What the act lacked in elegance, it made up for in ridiculous hilarity.
The rest of the performance chronicled the journey of the blue creatures of unspecified origin, foreign to a modern world. The audience watched as they attempted to discover the route to rock-stardom as they saw it in an infomercial. Because they can’t speak, the blue men discover the world through humorous interactions with the audience.
The vivid and engaging 90-minute show passed with surprising quickness, as the guys made child-like discoveries and shared their amusing finds through projected display cameras.
The performance, which combines a certain innocence and comedy with high tech video and lighting effects, doesn’t disappoint. Appropriate for any audience, ‘How To Be a Megastar Tour 2.0,’ which is currently touring 105 U.S. cities, isn’t something you want to miss. Ticket prices hover around $100, depending on the city; tickets for the Binghamton show cost $49.50 or $80.
The company is also involved in a wide variety of projects, including the recording of three albums: the Grammy-nominated Audio, The Complex, which became the musical basis for ‘The Complex Rock Tour,’ and Live At The Venetian-Las Vegas.