The Blue Man Group has been a phenomenon in this country, going from underground, bizarre, avant-garde, performance art to nationally recognized, bizarre, avant-garde, performance art. Much of that success had to do with their long run in Vegas, first at the Luxor and now in a space at The Venetian. They will have a third home in late 2012 when the show moves to the Monte Carlo.

Whether it was because some of the originality has worn off, what with their omnipresent television commercials and Jay Leno appearances, or the fact that I've seen the show multiple times and it hasn't changed all that much, but I didn't get the same heady kick that I did the first time I saw it. Mind you, it's still fun and an enormously entertaining evening at the theater, but it just doesn't as fresh.

Just in case you've been living in a cage somewhere, the Blue Man Group consists of three men whose bald-shaven heads are painted cobalt-blue, giving them the air of visitors from another planet. Their antics over the course of their show only reinforces this feeling, bringing to mind some sort of bizarre mix of Buster Keaton, Ernie Kovacs, and Mork from Ork.

The show opens with the Blue Men surrounding a pair of tall drums. As one of the guys does the percussion, the other two pour fluorescent paint on top, creating multi-hued sprays that fly up in their faces and cover a conveniently placed canvas. It sounds odd, and it is, but their behavior throughout - as if they are children discovering some bizarre and surprising new toy - is still hilarious.

That's the through-line for the entire show - these serene and expressionless blue beings that come across as super-intelligent, yet are perplexed and overwhelmed by something as simple as the wrapping on a snack cake.

Other scenes involve catching marshmallows and paintballs in their mouths, a series of messages printed on three different sets of posters that will have you reading faster than you ever have in your life, a symphony done with Cap'n Crunch cereal, a couple of stunts involving unsuspecting audience members (including the aforementioned snack cake bit), and music that they perform on various drums, pipes, and PVC tubing including a brief medley of everything from Gary Newman to Madonna.

It all ends with giant, twisting, neon tubes dropping from the ceiling and the audience buried in paper streamers. The guy sitting next to me asked, "What's the point of the paper?" and I responded, rightly I believe, that there is no point really. It's just all part of the nonsensical weirdness that is the Blue Man Group.

The theater at The Venetian is nowhere near as comfortable as their former digs at Luxor, with the seats tightly packed both to your left and right and front to back. I was getting claustrophobic long before I was buried in paper streamers. Hopefully the theater at the Monte Carlo will be left alone because it's really comfy.

If you've never seen the Blue Man Group, you owe it to yourself to experience it at least once. If you have seen them, this production doesn't warrant going back a second (or a third) time unless you are a fanatic about the bald blue guys.