Blue Man Group, the long-running show that has played in Chicago for decades, will put on its final performance at the Briar Street Theatre on Jan. 5, 2025.
According to an announcement Friday, tickets to the last shows are now on sale at Blueman.com.
Blue Man Group, the name of the performance company as well as the show, first opened at Briar Street in the Lakeview neighborhood in Oct. 1997. Known before then as “Tubes,” the show had begun on the New York fringe, opening off-Broadway in 1991.
In the show, a trio of wordless performers, bald and blue-skinned, turn all manner of tubes, drums and other devices into percussion instruments and pull off eye-popping stunts with marshmallows, paint and Cap’n Crunch cereal. The show changed its content periodically over the years, though some elements remained constant: Expressive eyes filling in for the wordlessness, the drumming, a certain anarchist streak and sense of humor that was turned both on themselves and the audience.
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In addition to New York and Chicago, there were commercial productions in Boston, Las Vegas and elsewhere. In 2017, Blue Man Group Productions was acquired by the Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil with an eye toward expanding to new locations such as China.
The Chicago show was shuttered for a time by the pandemic, like all theater, and reopened in August 2021. After January, other casts will continue in Boston and Las Vegas, with a new production planned for Orlando in April 2025.