Avenue Q Queued up for 2006???

Cameron Mackintosh has confirmed to Whatsonstage.com that award-winning Broadway musical Avenue Q will open in “one of my theatres next year” (See The Goss, 10 May 2005). Of the impresario’s expanding portfolio, the most likely venue is the recently renamed and currently being refurbished Novello Theatre (formerly the Strand – See News, 23 May 2005). It will be available from April 2006 after the Royal Shakespeare Company completes the first of its annual West End seasons as part of a five-year agreement with Mackintosh (See News, 7 Jun 2005). Having predicted that, if Avenue Q does go to the Novello, that may limit the length of its London season. Mackintosh has said that major “longrunners can’t happen” at the Novello, the Albery (to be renamed the Noel Coward Theatre at the end of next year) or the Gielgud, all of which will be made available to the RSC on an alternating basis. Avenue Q, which won three 2004 Tonys including Best Musical, takes an irreverent look at adult living using a traditional form of children’s entertainment, puppetry. It’s billed as a musical form of “Sesame Street meets South Park” and, despite it’s sending up popular kids TV shows, it carries the warning "full puppet nudity, not suitable for children." The show has music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and a book by Jeff Whitty.

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