Avenue Q Readies West End Announcement???

Cameron Mackintosh is very close to announcing full details for the UK premiere of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Avenue Q (See The Goss, 4 Oct 2005). Last summer, Theatre Royal Stratford East announced via Whatsonstage.com that it would host the musical for an eight-week season starting in February ahead of a West End transfer care of Mackintosh (See News, 21 Jul 2005), but those plans were quietly shelved because it was deemed too expensive to produce the show for two separate venues. Instead, Mackintosh - with his American partners The Producing Office - will open Avenue Q directly into one of his West End venues, probably the Albery (soon to be renamed the Noel Coward) or the Novello, this spring. At a press tour last night of the Novello, which Mackintosh has given a £4.5 million refurbishment, the impresario told Whatsonstage.com that his office would officially announce Avenue Q within the next fortnight. Casting is now complete, but don’t expect any big names. Mackintosh believes that the star is very much the show, which will succeed on word of mouth. 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.

An interesting aside. Avenue Q’s co-creator Jeff Marx, who marked his Broadway debut with the musical, used to work in Mackintosh’s New York offices but was sacked. “He drove everyone mad,” the producer told Whatsonstage.com. “He was just too hyperactive.” His former colleagues told Marx he should concentrate his abundant energy on something more useful, like writing a musical. Which is, of course, just what he did. Only to be reunited with his former employer.

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