I am handcuffed to a stranger on stage.

We are playing twister in front of a couple hundred people.

I am fine with it. Or I will be later. Right now I feel nothing beyond a sort of blinding euphoria.

Boston theater staple Blue Man Group revised and reimagined much of the show last fall. My editor thought I should check it out. What could go wrong?

I feel comfortable reviewing a range of things. I’ve managed to make sense of operas, ballets, Broadway musicals, fringe theater, and Iron Maiden performances. So I happily went to work during the first half of the show. I scribbled notes about French mimes, theater of the absurd, “Waiting for Godot.” Then he came for me.

As revolutionary as the show was when it debuted in New York in 1991 (it started its Boston residency at the Charles Playhouse in 1995), the Blue Man Group are basically clowns. And like all clowns, their role is to shock people out of a humdrum reality by evoking wonder and joy in close quarters. So the three tinted men spend nearly as much time in the audience as on the stage.

The trio is endlessly silly, witty and creative, from catching dozens of marshmallows in their mouths from 20 yards to banging on musical PVC pipes. But it’s when they’re right on top of you that the euphoria becomes overwhelming. You could see it on the faces in the audience the Blue Men approached, a mix of giggles and terror taking over, mind racing between “good Lord, don’t come closer” and “please, please, pick me.”

That’s certainly what I imagine my face looked like as one of them took my reporter’s notebook from my hand and passed it to my date before leading me up on stage.

It took a while for me to remember exactly what happened while I was up there — it’s one thing to watch another be yanked into the Platonic ideal of clowning — but here’s what I have pieced together:

They sat me and the stranger down on stools on opposite sides of them. I answered a cordless phone and chatted with the stranger awkwardly. They forced us to paint portraits of one of the trio with a rose in his mouth then had the audience judge the results (I lost). They handed me a “participant” pendant and camera and asked me to take a photo of them with the woman in a winner’s sash. Then everything accelerated at a wild pace — we were forced to exchange romantic gifts, put on the twister mat, handcuffed, handed champagne flutes, I think I somehow had a wedding veil on, and then like bride and groom we were marched through an aisle and out of the theater.

Later, back in my seat, my date said his greatest fear was being pulled onto stage by one of those “dead-eyed bastards.” And I get that. Audience participation is an overwhelming fear — note, while the troupe gets everyone engaged via dance parties, group cheers, and more surprises I won’t spoil, only half a dozen get pulled deep into the performance.

But there’s nothing like the experience — the high, the rush, the blinding exhilaration of getting deep in it all. For five minutes (or two or 20, I really don’t know), I wasn’t thinking about the crushing stress of adulthood. The relentless sense of unease that follows so many of us around had been exorcized. All it took was three, blue, dead-eyed bastards handcuffing me to a stranger on a twister mat in front of a crowd.

For tickets and details, visit blueman.com/boston.