THEATER: Blue Man Group

When a show runs as long as Blue Man Group (twenty years!), it's easy to take it for granted, a part of the neighborhood you, having once been there, hardly think about any more. I speak from my own experience here, since the last time I saw their show I was only thirteen years old; although I was impressed (as I was by Stomp, Blast, and other musical spectacles), I didn't give the show any further thought. I speak also from observing the audience, which seemed to be composed largely of rowdy tourists (a large group shared the "splatter zone" seats). The point is: though they seem to be having no trouble filling the theater, perhaps its time for regular theatergoers and New Yorkers to think about Blue Man Group again. After all, their shtick involves playfully looking at ordinary things anew, and we can all stand a spot of wonderment in our lives.

The first thing you've probably forgotten about Blue Man Group is that they're not just a bunch of blue-clad drummers. Yes, they like to thwack paint-filled puddles with drumsticks, and they like to experiment with the various sound-waves you can get from shortening and elongating giant tubes. But they're also a cadre of clowns, wide-eyed merry-making mimes who may pull you onstage to share a Twinkies dinner (aliens love candy, don't they?) or who may teach your children to turn eating cereal (Cap'n Crunch) into a musical adventure.

The second thing you've probably forgotten about Blue Man Group is that while they don't talk, they've got video interludes and on-screen text that's filled with some self-aware jokes and existential science. In other words, you won't just be dazzled by their colors; you'll have a neatly digestible lesson regarding the rods and cones in our retinas. You won't just be asked to shake your booty in the climactic having-a-good-time "rave" scene; you'll hear what seem like hundreds of slang terms for your behind, your trunk, your caboose, your "happy walrus with no tusks."

The third thing you've probably forgotten about Blue Man Group is that their show, which tours around the world and has permanent locations in a quite a few cities, keeps evolving its material. A xylophone-like synthesizer now allows for shout-outs not just to, say, Beethoven, but to Lady Gaga. More importantly, a variety of new segments have been added to the show that revolve around three "GiPad" devices -- iPads that are nearly twice as tall as the performers -- that descend from the ceiling and allow for some digital delights. In fact, the highlight of the show involves an illusion brought about by the "Digi-Enhance" feature of the GiPads: what begins as a series of onscreen images mirroring the live performers turns into a series of comic quick-changes, in which a Blue Man runs "into" one side of the digital image and out the other . . . only to find himself now wearing the avatar's costume. It's the most intricately timed portion of the evening, rivaled only by the physically impressive feat with which one Blue Man catches over sixteen marshmallows in his mouth -- at one time. (Kids will be rolling in the aisles; you may want to remind them not to try that at home.)

There are still a few ponderously pandering moments -- the Blue Men perhaps spend too much time wandering the theater's aisles, and a "human paintbrush" segment is charmlessly performed backstage -- but the show succeeds in leaving the audience with a sense of community and euphoria, which is the whole point. The Blue Man Group aren't just a bunch of musicians and mimes; they're ambassadors from a far-out planet, here to make friends and new discoveries, and their show remains a terrific staycation for the whole family.

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace \ Short Shorts (Exclusively) from "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

And now, the best micro-story that you'll ever read:

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never know, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

This is the page-zero opener of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, entitled "A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life." Consider this the follow-up to Girl with Curious Hair's "My Appearance," in which although sincerity has long been shown the door, we soldier on with grim humor. These two potential lovers don't talk about themselves: if they did, they might not be liked, even if it can only be the appearance of being liked (considering that, not actually knowing anything about one another, there is nothing to like). And there's something funny and sad in saying "She laughed extremely hard," for laughter should be free, not forced. As they leave, alone, focused entirely on their own narrow strips of pavement, we can imagine their faces twisted up into a smile and down into a frown. And, of course, the kicker: even the man who introduced them doesn't like them; will we ever be able to take anything at face-value again? [100/100]

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THEATER: Marie and Bruce

Photo/Monique Carboni

Though they share the same bed, there's a deep disconnect between Marie (Marisa Tomei) and Bruce (Frank Whaley). If that's not apparent from the first moment you see them in Marie and Bruce, playwright Wallace Shawn quickly clears up any confusion with Marie's opening monologue, a long harangue in which she repeatedly calls him a "shit" and a "cocksucker." That Bruce ignores her mocking shows either how depressingly inured he is to life with her -- and she to him, to have built up such an arsenal of insults -- or, more realistically, given the introspective style of much of Shawn's work, shows how much of this relationship is built on silence, i.e., the festering things not said aloud. That both are possible is actually a credit to Scott Elliot's vocally explicit, emotionally implicit direction, which magnifies the play's psychic rift by leaving the audience unsure of what to believe. (For instance, Marie insists that Bruce's trousers reek of urine, and he ends up changing pants, but because there are no visible stains, we have to take her word for it.)

This uncertainty is especially effective given that the play (save for a few monologues) is hyperrealistic, much like the film My Dinner with Andre, which Wallace completed two years after writing Marie and Bruce in 1979. In fact, the majority of the play takes place at the dinner party of a friend, Frank (Adam Trese): philosophical conversations and small talk take center stage (around designer Derek McLane's slowly spinning round table) as what we know about Marie -- she plans to leave Bruce after this party -- and what we are finding out about Bruce -- he's a likable guy with some ugly vices -- provide ominous, almost suspenseful subtext. With smooth segues from Shawn and gentle lighting shifts from Elliott (who has always been a genius with crowd scenes), an entire evening of highs and lows fly by, and as the diners grow fatigued, so do the cracks and separations between them, particularly with Marie, who quietly falls asleep at the table, alone in a sea of people.

Toward the end of the dinner, one of the guests bursts out with the philosophical conceit of Marie and Bruce, stressing that we don't always feel what we're actually feeling -- that is, because we're stuck processing things in our head, confused by, say, societal values that insist we should feel a certain way, we become separated from our true selves. Both Marie and Bruce are dependent on one another to some degree; have they mistaken that, somehow, for love? Thankfully, Shawn doesn't have any other guests blurt out the answer; instead, he doubles-down on subtleties that a wearied Tomei seems to dredge out of her soul in her post-dinner confrontation with Whaley, who, in turn, shows an anger and helplessness that sheds some light on an earlier revelation of his involving waitresses with low self-esteem and hotel-room voyeurism. These are just flawed people, after all; they, like us, don't have the answers. However, in watching them muddle through their relationship, we, unlike them, can have a good time.

Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace \ Short Shorts (Mostly) from "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men"

At the tail-end of Girl with Curious Hair (ironically, just before his longest story, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way"), Wallace makes a sudden shift toward shorter fiction -- pure anecdotes or vignettes that briefly distill an idea, leaving the wrestling mainly up to the reader. And that's fine, but only when it's really intensely done: there's not enough room in these shorts for Wallace to wander or play at vagueness.

That's precisely the problem with Curious Hair's "Everything Is Green," which opens in media res after our first-person narrator, Mitch, has apparently accused his younger girlfriend, Mayfly, of cheating on him. She's denied it, but "It is for sure that she is lying. When it is the truth she will go crazy trying to get you to believe her." In their rundown trailer, Mitch confesses that "Every thing that is inside me I have gave you" and that he feels "like there is all of me going in to you and nothing of you is coming back any more." All this is fine, and familiar in tone to his previous stories "Here and There" and "Say Never," but then Wallace takes a poetic turn, has Mayfly spout this: "Look how green it all is Mitch. How can you say the things you say you feel like when everything outside is green like it is." The idea, perhaps, is that even in the face of betrayal, we should recognize that life itself goes on, unaffected, and we should find comfort in that, not sorrow, this realizing of how small we are in the world, how minute our problems are . . . even though Mitch observes, wisely, that there are plenty of things that aren't green. There's something to be said for perspective -- having it, that is -- but the point is unconvincingly made here. [6/100]

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Short-a-Day: David Foster Wallace's "Say Never"

Originally published in Girl with Curious Hair. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 48.

I mentioned yesterday that Wallace's characters were sometimes criticized for appearing to be shallow constructs with which the author can demonstrate a point -- for instance, in this story, that humans are abruptly changeable things (hence the title, playfully modeled after the axiomatic never say never). I added, too, that when Wallace is dealing with the shallowness of Media and its insistence on appearances, this isn't really much of an issue: the characters are magnified by their proximity to that great magnifying glass of a television set. (Likewise when Wallace is writing specifically of General Characters, like the Account Representative, for then they are pared down to the titles which we ourselves may then more directly assume, and don't we all have a secret wish when reading to assume those roles, at least vicariously?) But for stories like "Say Never," which end abruptly, before the climax, and which flit between a variety of narrative styles as a shorthand for character (a bit like Faulkner, though not as developed), I can understand the complaint, even if I soldier through it out of love and respect for the artist at work.

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