Avant-garde artists the Blue Man Group are performing their weird mix of physical theatre, music and art for the first time in the UK. Taking mime to a new level, three bald-headed men painted in blue dish out a mixture of drumming, performance art, techno pop and general clowning around.

Audience anticipation is at fever pitch and spirits are high. The first five rows of theatregoers are kitted out in blue plastic macs and large numbers of people have strips of toilet paper wrapped around their heads. An electronic message board informs us that John is a little late on his credit card payments, which gets us totally primed for the silhouettes that appear through three windows and then take it in turns to pound away on drums covered in brightly coloured paint.

One Blue Man throws paint-filled marshmallows into the mouths of the other two, who then spit them out onto spinning white paper. Hey presto, a piece of art has been born that would make Damien Hirst proud. Handfuls of Rice Krispies are gobbled down, only to be ‘regurgitated’ from small tubes attached to their chests.

Every set is surreal and unexpected and, dare I say it, like nothing you would have seen before - though they may look familiar, because they’ve popped up in ads for Intel Pentium and are regularly satirised on American sitcom Arrested Development.

Inspired by the art of American painter Edward Hopper and French conceptualist Yves Klein, the Blue Man Group was started by three friends on the streets of New York in the late ‘80s. There are now 60 groups performing shows around the world accompanied by a band dressed in Kiss-like costumes strumming fluorescent guitars and crashing away on drums in elevated glass cages.

Why blue, you may wonder, but there’s nothing deep and meaningful about the choice of colour. Red has connotations with the devil, green with Martians and there’s a reggae performer called Yellow Man, so blue it had to be.

And, dressed in plain black uniforms, there’s something oddly erotic and vulnerable about the trio because you can’t see the real person behind the glistening blue paint. The Blue Men don’t speak and their faces are expressionless, which leaves their eyes to do all the communication.

Audience participation is invited and they ask us to head bang along with them during a lesson on ‘How to be a Rock Star’.  If no one volunteers to be hung upside down and covered in paint, they’ll climb between the rows of seats and pluck out a participant to have fun with.

What makes the show so clever is that it works on two levels. For all its comic slapstick the thinking behind the Blue Man Group is based on contemporary issues.

There’s witty commentary on the alienation of modern living and the voluntary isolation we inflict upon ourselves everyday; the history of animation is rushed through using shadow puppetry and clever video manipulation. But, taking the analytical approach isn’t a necessity because their objective is that we enjoy ourselves.

Their roots might be highbrow, but the execution is universal and, as the new arbiters of hip culture for the masses, blue is definitely the new black.

Blue Man Group
Drury Lane
Covent Garden
London, WC2B 5PW
0870 890 0141

Opening night 10 November 2005

Want to know more? Buy the DVD of the Blue Man Group - The Complex Rock Tour online and save yourself some money to put towards the DVD audio of The Complex, the Blue Man Groups second album.