Blue Man Group, the wordless theatrical troupe of drum-beating, paint-splattering, bald blue performers, will end its run in New York on Feb. 2, more than three decades and 17,000 performances after it began.
The troupe, which started as experimental street theater and is now a subsidiary of the global circus behemoth Cirque du Soleil, will also end its Chicago run on Jan. 5.
But the show will continue to run elsewhere, with long-running companies in Berlin, Boston and Las Vegas, and a forthcoming run in Orlando, where it is scheduled to reopen next spring after a four-year closure prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. There have also been touring productions.
The end of the New York production was announced in a news release by Jack Kenn, the company’s managing director; the release did not say why the show was closing, and publicists for the company did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
The closing at Astor Place Theater in Lower Manhattan comes at a challenging time for theater, as production costs are higher, and audience sizes generally lower, than before the pandemic.
Blue Man Group, which began performing at Astor Place in 1991, will conclude its New York run two years after the end of “Stomp,” another wordless, percussion-heavy show that had been an Off Broadway staple since 1994. And “Sleep No More,” an immersive riff on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” that opened in 2011, says its final performance will be Jan. 5. (It has previously postponed closing dates several times.)
Off Broadway has been a mixed bag since the 2020 shutdowns — many nonprofits are struggling, staging fewer shows and employing smaller casts than before. But in the commercial Off Broadway arena, there has been a rebound, as a number of shows have found ways to break through and succeed.
Some producers now believe that limited run shows have better odds of success, because consumers are more motivated to buy tickets when they know it’s now or never.
A new generation of long-running Off Broadway shows has arrived, although generally not with the longevity of Blue Man Group. A few examples: “The Play That Goes Wrong” transferred from Broadway to New World Stages in 2019 and is still running there; a revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” has been running at Westside Theater, also since 2019; and “Titaníque,” now at the Daryl Roth Theater, has been running Off Broadway since 2022.
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