For a stage stalwart, 'Blue Man' still in the pink

Sometimes you don't realize how much you miss people. For example, let's take blue people. I hadn't seen "Blue Man Group" since the Las Vegas edition opened four years ago at the Luxor. Doubts? I had a few. How would this deadpan triumph, this improbable show business success, this impish techno-performance-art trope making fun of performance-art pretensions already faded into the oblivion of recent history play on a second visit? Would the cobalt lose its sheen?

It would not, and has not.

I'd forgotten how funny this triumph of stone-faced, latex-headed clowning and percussion really is. Of all the long-running hits Chicago can claim, the shows playing many years to a lucrative mixture of locals and tourists, this remains the one to beat. Since 1997 "Blue Man Group" has taken up residence at the Briar Street Theatre on Halsted Street. On a recent visit, the show was packing 'em in like a hot new hit. Cabs disgorged tourists. Teenagers and their parents jostled with teenagers on their own, college kids, conventioneer types, suburbanites, urbanites on their third or fourth visit.

Martin Marion, Andrew Burlinson and Jason McLin played the blue men that night in "Blue Man Group." They wailed on PVC plumbing tubes, threw marshmallows from a pretty fair distance into each others' mouths and hammered those paint-splashed drums like blue brothers from another planet.

New material has been worked into the show this year. It's no big deal. shadowy video/live interlude about the soullessness of the Internet cafe scene contains a kernel of social commentary, to little effect.

A more kinetic section satirizing rock concert cliches and dance moves feels a decade out of date. More successful is a smaller piece on the history of animation.

The old stuff--the bulk of the material--remains much the same, and much fun. While "Blue Man Group" is as ritualized as Kabuki, the spirit of the event is giddy and freewheeling. Why wait four more years to catch it again? I'll wait 'til our kid is a little older is all.