Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...I've always considered this piece a brilliant blend of populism and cultural criticism and a fine gateway for the young not just into performance, but into visual art, that being a love of the co-founders. Such still is the case. The show has true historical significance in the trajectory of live commercial performance, If you've never had the pleasure, it awaits. But it is, of course, hard for what now has become a settled, long-running brand to remain on the vanguard."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...Watching the show for the first time in many, many years, I was struck by how prescient that mind-set happened to be. For here is a performance piece full of ideas — about art and the art market, visual perception, the science of optics, the nature of group dynamics and much, much more. Yet out of a fear of appearing too brainy, it knowingly dumbs down — disguising itself as a mindless fraternity-like group ritual full of subtly understood “rules” drawn primarily from rock concert culture. In other words, much like our culture as a whole, “Blue Man Group” is fully ambivalent."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Three silent guys in cobalt blue makeup, accompanied by a small but very loud rock band, perform a wordless, high-tech, highly visual work of participatory conceptual theater. Blue Man Group offers a visceral education in the tenuous division between art and trash."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Performance art, street act, vaudeville show, drum session, sketch comedy, tech fair, carnival party, science experiment, rock concert, alien sighting ... Briar Street Theatre's Blue Man Group is all these things and more, wrapped tightly into a one-and-a-half hour, roller-coaster-paced production unlike anything you'll see anywhere else. Revolving around the explorations of three blue-skinned, bald, humanoid, gender-neutral figures-silent yet with a penchant for making percussive sounds and communicating through their eyes-Blue Man Group makes for a truly unique variety entertainment."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...It's witty. It's fun. It's ever-evolving. Heck, it's even rocking. The almost lethal combination that is "Blue Man Group" has been packing the rows at the Briar Street Theater for nearly 10 years."
Chicago Stage Review - Highly Recommended
"...What BLUE MAN GROUP has always done, and continues to do, best is create visually dazzling manifestations of house music with a driving beat that is nothing short of irresistible. They are delightful percussionists and their supportive band is fantastic."
Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended
"...It’s nothing if not interactive: An audience member sitting in the “splash seats” is probed, not anally (as aliens usually prefer), but with an oral scope that pretends to inspect his innards. Another audience member becomes the subject of the Human Paint Brush, his entire body wrapped up, spray-painted and rubbed into art, as a closed-circuit camera shows us all the backstage shenanigans. (This audience member was a work of art in his own right.) A third volunteer is taken on stage and treated to a very bizarre meal of Twinkies that spewed out of her faster than they were ingested."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Blue Man Group is for everyone: kids, couples, visiting in-laws, clients, fun people, boring people, people with taste, people without taste. It's an immersive, multi-media, comedy-rock-dance-party-show spectacle for all! If you haven't seen it, you should; if you haven't seen it recently, bring the kids, the new girlfriend, the family you have nothing to talk about with; if you have seen it recently, you might just as well wait a couple years, it'll be around."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...If you want a night out that will guarantee you and your companions enjoy yourselves, Blue Man Group will satisfy in more ways than one. It's musical, funny, visually stunning, and accessible to broad audience. It has a more mainstream patina than its source which bugs me, but it's a safe bet for those intimidated by edgier theater shows. Where else can you end a night bouncing gigantic beach balls whilst covered in toilet paper dancing to a song about butts?"
- Bellisant Corcoran-Mathe
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...This is not your typical musical ! This is a very modern expression of music using a combination of science and technology. Now the experience has been remastered to reach a new audience. This new staging includes 17 immersive screens, all new videos, and a new show opening that I really enjoyed. The show still contains the same acts as before and even more interaction with the audience. Remember, if you are in the first 5 rows center, you will get wet."
Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended
"...So if Blue Man Group is offering up the Same Old Same Old, Dated Dye Job Blues, is it still worth seeing? Well, given that a good portion of the audience seemed to be in the 6 to 12 age range, I would say sure. The children laughed and giggled consistently, albeit not riotously, at all of the candy tossing and paint flinging. For them, the bald blue men were something fresh and new and funny. It also strikes me as a good show for couples on a first date, since so much of the show consists of audience interaction (and in fact, audience members in the first few rows have to wear plastic ponchos to avoid inadvertent dyeing.) Blue Man Group's time has clearly passed as a mildly subversive, semi-avant garde sensation - their indigo got up and went - but as an evening of silly family fun, they still are capable of offering up a banging good time."
The Fourth Walsh - Highly Recommended
"...Blue Man blue me away! What a trip!! Plan a visit for the first time or a return engagement. For me, the best part of the show was taking my nephew again. He loved it as a kindergartner and again as an adult. And I loved hearing his infectious boyish laughter both times."
Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended
"...Blue Man Group is a treat. It’s an event, and it’s enthralling. This show is a lot of spectacle, but with a lot of thought put into it as well. Perhaps most importantly, it’s the kind of show that makes people who don’t normally see theater get out and buy a ticket! Everyone wants to see Blue Man Group, the same way that everyone wants to see a big summer blockbuster. And the fact that this show manages to create something like this, and actually respect the intellect of their audience, might be one of the most notable theatrical feats of the 90’s, 2000’s and beyond."
Third Coast Review - Recommended
"...Seeing the Blue Men every few years-a must-see Chicago ambassador alongside the Bean, The Infinite Wrench and the various architectural boat tours-is an ever-changing reflection on the state of art, and the humans who create it, codify it, monetize it. The current moment is pondering the place of artificial intelligence in modern civilization (union actors and writers are a hard pass). These Blues Clues remain computer-esque, expressionless, like koken for artistic mischief. Does breaking norms beget lasting innovation? Are Blue Men the love children of humanity and technology?"
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...An evening with Blue Man Group is pretty much guaranteed to leave you smiling. It’s inventive entertainment of a kind you just can’t find anywhere else. I saw the show in its first year here in Chicago and have long held fond memories of those three expressionless blue men. The updated version, the first time in over two decades I’d seen the production, doesn’t disappoint. Part music and light, part performance art, part comedy, part social commentary, and partly just plain goofy, the Blue Man Group continues to be part of the fabric of Chicago. You’d have to be Scrooge not to have fun at this show."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...It is amazing how they create music with pipes and make drums out of barrels, all backed up by a live rock band that accompanies them throughout. The show is colorful, paint is splashed as music is being made in a spectacle of sound and image that awakens your senses. The members of The Blue Man Group are masters of mimic and words are not needed for them to connect with the audience from the stage. But the show is an immersive experience and they come down and mingle, connect with different people, in different areas of the theatre, so expect to have one of them staring at you with big eyes right in front of you."
