New in blue It takes more than shiny face paint to earn a place in the Blue Man Group.(Suburban Living)

Byline: Pam DeFiglio Daily Herald Staff Writer

People are crowding into the lobby of the Briar Street Theatre, with only a half-hour to go until show time.

The three stars are hanging out here, too, enjoying the fact they can stroll around freely. Nobody recognizes them, because they're not blue.

It's almost time to go to makeup, when Tom Galassi, Chris Browne and newcomer Gareth Hinsley will don bald caps and slather the finely calibrated color Blue Man Blue on their heads and hands.

But for now, they're happy to speculate on why the show, which opened at Briar Street in Chicago in fall 1997 as a performance-art oddity, has been such a long-running hit. Far from getting creaky, the piece has been freshened over the years with new scenes. And this month, Hinsley, an actor from Leicester, England, steps in as a new Blue Man.

Seeing a London performance of Blue Man Group blew him away, he says, leading him on a half-year quest to turn himself into a Blue Man - one of a trio of wordless actors with a penchant for percussion who take the stage to offer observations and commentary on the art world and society. That might not seem like a surefire bet to make a show a funny, popular success, but it has worked for Blue Man Group.

"Back in London, you see a lot of really bad theater," Hinsley explains. "But I thought this came from a very true place."

The blue inside

Hinsley had three years of drama school and performances in serious works like "Angels in America" under his belt when he first saw the blue guys do their thing.

"I was in awe of the whole thing, of how real it was," he says. "There was a feeling anything could happen."

He went to an open audition for a new Blue Man in London six months ago. The main qualifications: A talent for drumming, an average height and "eye sparkle" - the ability to express emotions with the eyes.

Hinsley was promising, but not quite ready. The Blue Man Group music director sent him to drumming school for three months - without a contract. When the show's directors thought he could drum well enough, they moved on to other training. Seven weeks ago, he came to Chicago.

Because Blue Man Group frequently switches performers among its Chicago, New York, Boston, Las Vegas, Berlin, Toronto, Amsterdam and London productions, there's a chance Hinsley could end up in one of those places - or in the Orlando show that will be opening soon at Universal Studios. But for now, he's a Chicago guy.

Tom Galassi, who has been performing in the show since 1997, mentors Hinsley in the ways of being blue.

"Gareth came to us with the basic knowledge. We're just helping him find his character," says Galassi, a native of Springfield, Ill.

Character?

The three actors stress Blue Men don't simply play a role, as actors would in a play.

Instead, they say the characters are outsiders, discovering the Blue Man world anew with every performance.

"You're just kind of raw and heightened personally. You're looking at everything like a child," says Galassi. "That's the exhausting part."

Hinsley, the new guy, has to go within to find his character, says Galassi. And Hinsley says that process of letting go can be difficult.

"The character's so open," he marvels.

Even the shiny makeup is calculated to telegraph the Blue Men's expressions.

"It looks cool, but there's a reason for it," Galassi explains. "With that color, whatever you're feeling translates right out to the audience.

And of course the makeup also makes a philosophical statement.

"We put on the mask, and talk about ripping our own cultural masks off," Galassi points out.

The new and old

In addition to the new guy, the Blue Man Group has added some scenes. One explores the history of animation, while another looks at the weirdness of sitting in an Internet cafe and, while ignoring the people around you, conversing electronically with strangers. Both of them bear the Blue Man hallmarks of sharp social observation and satire, punched up with Blue Man theatrics.

The show still contains classic time-tested bits, such as the Cap'n Crunch cereal crunching, the tossing of marshmallows into a Blue Man's mouth, the drumming with multi-colored paint, the eating of Twinkies with an audience member and the passing of reams of crepe paper through the audience. Which all explains why audience members in the first several rows are offered raincoats.

All of the acts share the Blue Man aesthetic. You can take them as comments on consumer culture and the snobbery of the art world. Or, because they come off as clever and funny, you can just laugh.

"I think the show's funny, but there's more to it," says Hinsley.

"It's an experience. I don't feel comfortable labeling it.

Galassi tries his own take.

"We're having a tribal experience," he says, then adds, in a wink-wink tone, "with a paying audience."

Which brings up a good point. When an outsider, underground show gets so big that it expands to nine cities and charges 60 bucks a ticket, does it also become a target worthy of skewering?

Starving artists looking for a big breakout, take note.