Meet the little Blue men

The show is a riot of colour, slapstick and music played on PVC instruments.
10 April 2012

There can't be many brands that started out as an art-world in-joke. But in 1988, two young drummers-cum-waiters, Chris Wink and Phil Stanton, and Wink's childhood friend, software producer Matt Goldman, painted their heads with sticky blue paint and held a "funeral" in Central Park for everything that they hated about the 1980s - artistic pretension, yuppie madness, postmodern architecture. Seventeen years later, Blue Man Group is a phenomenon.

That single joke has mushroomed into an exuberant performance embracing slapstick, satire, rock music (played on bizarre PVC instruments invented by BMG), performance art and science. It is anchored by the character of the Blue Man, who is mute, innocent, endlessly inquisitive and competitive with his two fellows.

They splatter paint from the skins of PVC kettle drums onto canvases, mutely namecheck Yves Klein, Brecht and the decoder of the DNA helix, chop up sugary Twinkie snacks with power saws and, in a ravey musical finale, cover the audience in toilet paper.

Their simultaneous celebration and debunking of the most abstruse high art is underpinned by a child-like sense of fun. Matt Goldman sums it up: "Damien Hirst sells a spin painting for $300,000. The Blue Man just makes 200,000 spin paintings."

The character has proved both durably popular and surprisingly easy to clone and develop. Variations on the pioneer New York show are running in Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Berlin and Toronto, with the first London production opening on Thursday. The Blue Men have released two albums, scored the animated film Robots, and carved out a lucrative sideline advertising Intel Pentium Processors.

The three founding Blue Men remain in charge of the whole operation, meaning they no longer need to work as waiters. The turnover of Blue Man Group shows in 2003 was estimated at more than $1 million a week (although when Goldman's mother was interviewed by NBC about her son's success, she said: "He had a good job before. A really good job"). Yet the trio still seem nervous about the London run.

"Our hopes for London are both humble and extraordinary," says Matt Goldman, leaning his chair against a bank of recording equipment in BMG's downtown rehearsal studios in Manhattan. "We just want people to get us, for the show to strike a chord, and for it to run for years and years, so it gets to the point that people say: 'This is so London.'" Phil Stanton says, "There are no guarantees."

They will, according to Chris Wink, "have to work harder there than anywhere else in the world." This is not a financial concern. When they opened in Boston, Wink, Stanton and Goldman had to open the dress rehearsal to paying punters because they couldn't "make payroll", and they initially took Intel's shilling to raise awareness of the slow-selling, huge Vegas show at the Venetian Hotel. But for Berlin and London the financial risk is taken by BMG's partner, Stage Holdings.

So their nerves come from a mixture of aesthetic and commercial pride. As Liberal New Yorkers (they say they'd love to bury this decade, too, Bush and all) they are keen to be appreciated in London, "the theatre city". And there is the psychological imperative that, once opened, no Blue Man show has closed so far.

When I point out to them that companies such as Stomp, Cirque du Soleil and the Argentine acrobats De La Guarda have proved there is a market in London for vibrant shows that don't fit into a conventional niche, Goldman says: "But De La Guarda only ran for three months. Most companies would consider that a smash hit, but if we only run that long, we will be very disappointed."

They shouldn't worry. There is something basic and universally appealing in the Blue Man's, ahem, make-up. Being wet he looks newborn but fully formed, his curiosity underlined by his alien-ness.

There are three of them because, as Stanton explains, "that's the smallest number that can comprise a group in society", but also because the number lends itself to jokes based on the comic Rule of Three (set-up, development, payoff).

He makes instruments out of PVC because (Stanton again) "the tube is the earliest form of musical instrument", but being born into the modern world, plastic is his natural material. "Also," adds Goldman, "there's sort of a punk ethos to it. When we started out we weren't that good at anything. But if you build your own instruments, you very quickly become the best people in the world at playing them."

Stanton says outsiders often click instantly with the character, knowing at once whether a new routine is in keeping with the Blue Man's personality, long before the performers work it out.

There are currently around 50 or 60 Blue Men in circulation through the various shows worldwide (there have even been black and female performers in the past) and Goldman says it takes between 100 and 125 performances for each one really to understand the character. The London troupe will consist of two new British recruits and one "six-year veteran", Michael Dahlen, to school them.

Goldman, Wink and Stanton rarely "get blue" themselves these days. Now in their early forties, all married and mostly with families, they do the Intel ads and the TV and film spots, but mostly they concentrate on writing, developing the shows and growing the company.

I ask if they ever catch themselves "doing" Blue Man in real life. "One time," says Goldman, "we were supposed to have this meeting on Valentine's Day, but it was cancelled, so we decided to make these costumes like big Valentine Heart candies and surprise our wives.

In the photos of that night, Chris and Phil are, like, totally doing Blue Man." "Actually," Phil Stanton adds, "my wife only told me recently that she really likes the smell of the blue make-up." "There is a sex appeal to the character," pipes up Michael Dahlen.

"Okay," says Matt Goldman, "I think we'll stop right there."

He's right. From my exposure to the character, I'd say sex is definitely out of the equation. The prospect of Blue Man groupies doesn't bear thinking about.

The Blue Man Group previews at the New London Theatre. (0870 890 0141). From Thursday.

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