Avenue Q

Synopsis

Avenue Q is not the most upmarket of New York streets, and is about as far away from Park Avenue as you can get, but it is home to some lively and off the wall characters performed by an unholy comedic alliance of humans and puppets! Princeton, a bright-eyed college graduate, has just moved to this neighbourhood as he desperately tries to follow his dreams and discover his ever-elusive purpose in life. A tiny bank balance, the distraction of a busty blonde and a variety of weird and wonderful friends and neighbours lead Princeton on a hilarious story of self-discovery. Life may suck on Avenue Q but being jobless, homeless, politically incorrect, having sex (whether hetero, homo or porno... and that s just the puppets) are just some of the topics featured in the terrific songs of this show.

Our Review:

Simon Cole - 24 May 2011

From the moment the curtain rises on Avenue Q, with a short and cute introductory cartoon, giving way to a street set filling with muppet-like puppet characters and humans, to the strains of the Avenue Q theme, you are in no doubt where the inspiration for this show is drawn, and you are in familiar feel-good territory. However, as our ‘hero’ Princeton arrives in this down at heel suburb of New York, fresh from college, wondering “What do you do with a B.A. in English?”, and encounters his new neighbours, who each believes “It Sucks to Be Me”, you realise that this is not quite the safe and saccharine world of Sesame Street. It is more ‘Sesame Street meets Sondheim, where every character, puppet and human alike, have their flaws and their failings.

Where the legendary US kids show educates the audience in their ABCs and times tables, this very adult pastiche handles the more knotty problems of the human condition, including racism, sexuality and crus...

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