My sidekick for Friday night’s Blue Man Group return performance at Luxor had never seen the act before. As we were offered long ribbons of fluorescent-yellow paper (which can be fashioned as a headband, or, if you will, intimate apparel), I was asked, “Is this show messy?”
“Yes,” I said. “Up front, there is goo.”
This conversation really did happen, and it might tell you all you need to know about the Blue Men: Florescent, unexpected, and some goo. After four-plus years at Monte Carlo, the guys returned to the place where it all started nearly 16 years ago: Luxor.
The pointy resort is where BMG spent five successful and substantive years before being turned loose just as MGM Mirage (now MGM Resorts) took over hotel operations in 2005.
Ever since that shift in resort ownership, I’ve agreed with BMG co-founder Chris Wink that the Blue Men would never have moved if MGM Mirage had taken the hotel just six months earlier from then-owner Mandalay Entertainment.
But the return to Luxor, a decade in the making, represents a healthy recharge of the battery of the Blue Men. They occupy what is, at least by comparison to their other Strip venues, a smaller theater.
The Luxor room originally built for Jabbawockeez is a relatively tight fit. You feel this especially for the percussive, hard-rocking band backing the three Blue Men.
One of the great challenges in moving from a proper theater, as was Monte Carlo’s 1,200-seat fortress, to the 820-seat enclave at Luxor is managing the sound. The guys in the BMG band are rockers, and the Blue Men themselves pound PVC pipe with hearty intent.
But how the Blue Men have successfully made the shift is by adapting their classic stage elements, in place for the past 15 years, while making it all seem fresh. It helps that the Blue Men are timeless, nearly devoid of any age (though they are “men”) and always exuding youth and beguilement.
The time-tested routines remain: The tossing of marshmallows from one Blue Man to the mouth of another, some two dozen, which is regurgitated to a large mound of goo (that word again) with a price tag of $5,000 slapped on the side.
Captain Crunch, as chewed to loud amplification to a raging backbeat. The Feast Table, the commonly nonplussed audience member is invited to a triple date with all of the Blue Men, cutting up Twinkies and wearing a breastplate that invariably spews banana goo (yes) across the stage. The pounding of drums illuminated in brightly painted colors with the flashing liquid spraying skyward.
None of this was just drawn up yesterday, mind you. It’s all familiar material. But the insistence of the performances and the room itself give the production its characteristic edge and urgency.
Relatively new numbers are the satire of smartphones and notepads — the GiPad, for “gigantic,” is the device — where one of the Blue Men tries maddeningly to enter a complex password, only to be continually rejected.
The Velociraptor-like Phoenix drum kits, mobile instruments outfitted with wheels to allow the Blue Men to stroll the stage while keeping the beat, is a cagey (literally) innovation.
What needs tweaking: The room doesn’t seem to accept the oversized smoke-ring act near the end of the show. Something about the theater’s low rake or how the air conditioning is calibrated makes those rings, which soared through the Monte Carlo intact, simply dissipate.
The rolls of tissue descending from the back of the theater cannot be stretched to the front of the stage without some tugging from BMG stage hands — there is a bit of distance between the lower and upper section.
This is the same move employed at Cirque du Soleil’s “The Beatles Love” at the Mirage for the scene where the white silk is pulled toward the top of the theater. It’s a little extra work, but the audience seems to like being covered in the fabric. Same is true at BMG, where audience members can’t wait to snare that tissue.
But any quibbling about the new version of the show will doubtless be addressed. Blue Man Group has settled in once more, its fourth Las Vegas venue in three hotels, all on the Strip. They are a classic for a reason: They are original, they remain artistically thirsty, and nobody does what they do.
The show is a lot more than goo, but you get that, too.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.
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