Don't let this blue face scare you. They are a gentle species.

It’s an easy recipe;  you can try it at home.  Apply face paint, a bald cap, and a black turtleneck.  Be silent.  Interact with humans for best results.

This is the simple formula that has allowed the Blue Man Group to conduct one of the most successful and inventive social psychology experiments in the world of theater consistently for nearly two decades.  There’s no tinfoil, let alone CGI, but when the Blue Men get into costume, they become aliens, and through their eyes, we are able to see the strangeness of our own world.

Their series of connected multi-media sketches act as a would-be instruction manuals for how to be a human. For example, how to be a successful rock-and-roll musician (use lots of choreographed dance movements) or how to behave in an Internet café (sit with people you will never speak to while attempting to communicate with people who are not there).

We see an exhibit from the Museum of Extremely Modern Art that consists of dead fish pinned to the wall and a fancy dinner party where the only thing to eat is one packaged Twinkie.  Art is not art.  Food is not food.  They make musical instruments out of pipes, paints, and boxes of Captain Crunch, and they decorate the theater with… (well, you’ll see).  They teach us about the innovative technology that connects every person with a series of tubes (plumbing), and create one of the most astounding optical illusions I’ve ever seen with instruments used by cavemen.  Everything is topsy-turvy in Blue Land, but it really, really works.

A major theme of the show is loneliness.  Though the Blue Men never speak, it is apparent as they explore their strange new world that they feel a desperate need to connect with something, anything.  The music, each other, us.  Alienation is not an uncommon theme in the theater these days, but the Blue Man Group achieves something unique: by the end of the show, when the strobe lights come on and the rave music starts, you feel as though you’ve made a connection with the entire audience merely through having witnessed the same performance.  Though much of the Blue Man Group show is comprised of deceptively sophisticated stunts that wouldn’t seem out of place at a frat party, its true message of intimacy in an increasingly isolating world is exuberantly conveyed, both physically and emotionally, by the fascinatingly strange and prodigiously talented Blue Men.