The Blue Man Group Set To Close In January
Posted September 28, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The curtain is reportedly set to fall on the Blue Man Group for the final time on January 7th after a just a year and a half at the Panasonic Theatre on Yonge Street near Bloor.
“We are very proud of the show we created, and the incredible quality of work done by our employees on a nightly basis,” read a statement issued by the Blue Man Group.
In what may be a sign of the city’s diminishing status as a major theatre town, especially considering past closures, Toronto is the first centre where the bizarre blue men haven’t been a huge success. The show has been running in New York for more than a decade and still draws big crowds in Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas and London.
The show sparked great controversy within the arts community for hiring non-union workers and labour groups representing stage actors, technicians, and musicians have called on Torontonians to boycott the Blue Man Group.
The unions characterized the show’s “incursion into Toronto” as “increasing evidence of the coporatization of Canadian arts and culture.”
“Placing the blame for the show’s failure on our city instead of squarely where it belongs, with the show’s deliberate inability to make itself part of our community, continues a pattern of disrespect for Toronto evidenced by Blue Man from day one,” Susan Wallace, Executive Director of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association, said in a statement.
The protests surrounding the Blue Man Group may have had something to do with its early closing. The show was so hyped before it opened in Toronto the Panasonic Theatre underwent $12 million in renovations just to host it. Producers had hoped it would run for about a decade.
It was a similar but much more expensive situation with The Lord of the Rings, which cost approximately $28 million to stage. It closed after a short five-month run at the Princess of Wales theatre.
Bad reviews were blamed for the three-and-a-half-hour production’s demise and it’s now off to London where a revised version will hit the stage at the Drury Lane Theatre in May 2007.
