Blue Man Group in Boston is Our Source for Toilet Paper Review

It's the first day of February Vacation with the kids.  Now what?  We decided against skiing up in Maine because once a year is enough - both on my psyche and on my wallet.  I suppose we could go to Cape Cod or Newport like we did on previous February vacations, but the kids were ambivalent about those ideas, so why bother.

Then we had an inspired idea - what about going to see the Blue Man Group in Boston?  We went to see the Blue Man Group a long time ago, purchased half price tickets in obstructed view seats (although they weren't really THAT obstructed, and the kids could tell their friends that they saw the BLUE MAN GROUP!

Boston, MA. 12pm.  The first issue occurred the minute we got to Bostix, the half price theater outlet in Faneuil Hall.  It's closed on Mondays, despite the fact that the agency was advertising half price tickets for the day we were there.  How were we supposed to buy these tickets, exactly?  I just remember seeing tickets from $49-$89 per seat.  For my nine year old, seven year old and five year old (who was the most skittish of the bunch when I showed her a picture of the Blue Man Group trio), those half priced seats would be most useful.  How much was that ski trip again?

A couple of bills lighter, when we finally got to our seats in the middle balcony, there was definitely an air of excitement - maybe it was from the toilet paper hanging over our heads.  The show, as I remembered from our visit years ago, started the same way - two scrolling screens imploring us to turn our cell phones off, while telling us to wish some guy Robert a happy birthday and celebrate someone who won a gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics (I don't know if either were true).  MM and I were barraged by questions of "What did that say" and "What's so funny?" as were watching the scrolling screens.  They were going to fast for the seven year old to read, the five year could only pick up words like "if," "we" and "the" and the nine year old was still salty about having to sit next to Mom instead of Dad.

The first sketch once the lights went down was the Blue Man Group banging their drums with yellow, red and blue paint dancing from their drums, mixed with some artistic paint ball and marshmallow art renderings from the mouth.  The kids were instantly mesmerized, particularly when they grossed the audience out with the marshmallow in the mouth mountain landing in the lady's pocketbook.

The second skit involved three smart phones coming down from the rafters.  The skit had the Blue Man Group guys go behind the phones and show up on the screens of the smart phones in near perfect synchronicity.

"How'd they do that?"  I heard in unison. 

The sketch was stopped for a Late Arrival Alarm.  That seemed staged, but maybe that was just me (in any event, get there on time).  Quickly followed by the pipe drums.  Pretty cool, especially when they did a quick refrain from Crazy Train.

We were then entertained by some audience participation sketches - first a lady who looked a little freaked out to be up on stage (at first) being courted by the three blue men, then a guy who was used as a paint brush (although it didn't look like him as the guy was hung upside down and thrown against the wall canvas like a rag doll).

The finale featured the ubiquitous toilet paper (I now have a couple of piles of toilet paper with blue paint on them in the back of the truck - awesome) and four huge beach balls.  The kids went absolutely crazy.  It didn't stop there as the guys performed a drums finale and stood around posing for pictures.  The kids couldn't stop talking about them.  

Ultimately, a successful start to the vacation.  I would strongly suggest you bring the kids, but pay for those half price seats, the theater is not that big and not really that obstructed.  Only six more days of vacation to go.