Blue Man Group adds new material, including Showbot character

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You have your new toys, but the Blue Man Group does too. Just don’t expect Smoke Drums or a Neuronulum to fit in your pocket.

Phil Stanton, a Blue Man founder and one of its three original performers, admits to phone separation anxiety like the rest of us. He doesn’t just have to have it on his person: “I realize how much I actually have it in my hand.”

So the themes of information overload that ran through the original Blue Man show in early 2000 now seem a little quaint. “Information overload is now absorbed into our DNA,” Stanton says.

The Blue Man Group is making its new show respond both to changing technology and customer pressure for new material. The new production at the Monte Carlo opened this week for (nondiscounted) previews; the official grand opening is Nov. 14.

“The Blue Man can and should be relevant at all times,” Stanton says.

Those who know the old show from the Luxor or The Venetian will see the changes to all but 15 or 20 minutes of classic material. New sequences include the Blue Man’s version of a touch-screen device, a look at how the human brain works and a Showbot character to illustrate how much robotics have been ingrained into our lives.

“The past few years have been the most productive, creative period we’ve ever had,” Stanton says of the group he co-founded with Matt Goldman and Chris Wink.

The New York-based company has remodeled the Monte Carlo theater long occupied by magician Lance Burton – and more lately by the Jabbawockeez dance troupe – while the group continued to perform at The Venetian until the end of September.

The Blue Men will herald each night’s Monte Carlo performance with a “Percussipede” parade through the main casino, showing off the new contraption Stanton describes as “biomorphic” with “a steam-punk vibe.”

Changes continue all the way to the end, where the reams of paper that used to cover the audience give way to new floating orbs that achieve the same goal: Making sure “we all in some way feel connected as an audience,” Stanton says.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.