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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. Running time approx. 2hrs 15mins (including 15 min interval)
Tony Award-winning Broadway musical comedy Avenue Q opened last night (following previews from 1 June) at Cameron Mackintosh’s newly renamed Noel Coward Theatre (formerly the Albery). The offbeat show – billed as a musical form of Sesame Street meets South Park - features a cast of just seven humans, three of them playing humans, the rest manipulating multiple puppets that include a closet gay puppet called Rod, a porn-addicted puppet called Trekkie Monster, and a puppet looking for love called Kate Monster (See News, 17 Feb 2006).
Avenue Q has music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and a book by Jeff Whitty. It’s directed by Jason Moore, with puppets conceived and designed by Rick Lyon, and scenic design by Anna Louizos. The London cast features original Broadway cast member Ann Harada along with Julie Atherton, Jon Robyns, Giles Terera, Simon Lipkin, Clare Foster and Sion Lloyd.
Overnight critics enjoyed the light-hearted, zany take on modern urban living, but many were unconvinced that Avenue Q is as cutting edge, subversive or politically incorrect as it would like to be. As for the central conceit, although initially endearing, by Act Two, the inspired use of puppets in the show had lost its impact, according to the critics, some of whom also had reservations about the show’s Americanisms. (To hear what theatregoers thought on opening night, view our WOS TV footage and check out our 1st Night Photos to see which celebrities were in attendance!)
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com - “We’re so mesmerised by the trick of it all, that it would be easy to overlook the brilliance of the art behind the charade. I became incidentally fascinated by the vocal ingenuity of Julie Atherton as the main man Princeton’s girlfriend, Kate Monster (doubled with Lucy the Slut)… There are a few problems. Surely no English audience has the remotest idea about the identity of a black former child star called Gary Coleman ... And the second act is definitely inferior to the first… It just goes a little downhill, partly because the material is less good, but chiefly because we have got the point of it all by now, and we feel like moving on to the next port of call, thanks all the same. Still, I haven’t laughed so much since Sooty and Sweep had a teatime television threesome with sweet little Soo.”
Benedict Nightingale in the The Times - “Extract the puppetry and the best of the songs, and the story is awfully ordinary… there are puppets and there are songs, and they do much to cover up the sentimentality and predictability. Most performers appear onstage… attached to a puppet, and the person and the attachment act and speak in sync. Since those attachments mostly have round velvety faces and large, lipless, toothless mouths, the effect is both a rip-off and send-up of the Muppets… Here, maybe, is whatever point the evening possesses. These puppets do, say and sing things I don’t recall when I watched their prototypes on TV with my children. They have pretty vigorous, variegated sex. They use words that The Times prints in asterisks. A large hairy puppet called the Trekkie Monster, and clearly indebted to the Cookie Monster, delivers an ode to porn. It’s mischievous and, frankly, rather juvenile stuff — but then what’s so wrong with that? Indeed, there’s something almost refreshing in several of the jaunty-sounding songs…. But to listen to the lyrics themselves is to understand why the show has had so long a run on Broadway. Those looking for something genuinely subversive or politically incorrect will leave the Coward unrewarded.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian - “Puppetry is no longer kids' stuff… As a late convert to the art of string-pulling and manual manipulation, I warmed to this Muppet-style mix of humans and puppets… Much of the show's charm lies in the easy interaction of people and puppets: one human couple, a would-be comic and his Chinese wife, effortlessly socialise with their fuzzyfurry neighbours. There is more wit than whimsy in the delightful Lopez-Marx numbers… But, much as I welcome the show's rudeness and the spectacle of puppet rumpy-pumpy, there is something very New Yorkish about the emphasis on cosy village life and private dreams. Underneath the show's glancing satire there is the inevitable feelgood ending in which we're reassured that ‘everyone's a little bit unfulfilled’. Having started from the premise that ‘life sucks’, the show ends with the hint of false cheer that goes with musical territory…” Nevertheless, decided Billington, “you have to admire the show's oddness”.
Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph - “Gosh, gee, golly and all things beginning with the letter ‘g’, what a disappointment… Maybe the zany idea, combined with the show's gilded reputation, will be sufficient to keep the crowds coming. But either something has been lost in translation or this dinkily alternative but incredibly light-weight affair, staged now with a mainly British cast, was never as much cop as its New York admirers have been claiming. Robert Lopezand Jeff Marx’s tame beast of a show lumbers up a cul-de-sac of one-note satire before hitting a brick wall of anodyne schmaltz… By the second half, I found myself mentally rechristening it Avenue ZZZ… No complaint can be levelled against the performers, who bound around the stage with all the cutesome, fresh-faced enthusiasm and energy of, well, children's television presenters. But the material itself ambles when it should run, and, too keen to be loved, never lets the fur fly.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent - “With a jaunty, if generic, score and smart, sassy lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, the show applies the look and format of Sesame Street to the college-educated but unsuccessful twenty- and thirty-something denizens of a low-rent neighbourhood in New York. And it gets a lot of comic mileage out of the mismatch… What's appealing about the piece and Jason Moore's bouncy, enjoyable production is the total absence of jaded cynicism. What's less attractive is the lack of real bite… All the same, I found it, intermittently, a lot of fun… it's not every show that manages to be tongue-in-cheek and hand-on-heart, while having its arm up a puppet's bum.”
Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard - "This affectionate adult spoof of Sesame Street is a one-joke show. Fortunately, it's a pretty good joke, for a while at least... The first few times we hear a goggle-eyed sock in a wig swear, it's undeniably funny. But even if we accept it as a wider satire on American culture or an even bigger mockery of universal human weakness, the puppets-as-real-people gag eventually wears thin... The actors, all but one of them non-Americans, are both convincing and sweet-voiced. Always visible, they manipulate Rick Lyon's deceptively expressive puppets beautifully. But once you've heard the title of a song - It Sucks To Be Me, Everyone's A Little Bit Racist - you've got the gag."
NOTE: This review dates from June 2009 and this production's run at the Gielgud Theatre.
After a brief holiday, Avenue Q has relocated from the Noël Coward to the slightly larger Gielgud. Nothing has been lost in transition, though the Sesame Street-with-sex puppet musical is inevitably beginning to show signs of age.
Ostensibly a show about the rocky transition from university to real life (a particularly pertinent subject in light of current unemployment figures), Avenue Q speaks to a generation who've been brought up to believe they can achieve anything, yet find it almost impossible to achieve, well, anything.
Recent English Literature grad Princeton heads, BA in hand, for the grimy yet affordable neighbourhood of Avenue Q. Taking a room from former child star Gary Coleman (if you fancy a laugh look up Coleman's biog on Wikipedia), he soon falls in and out of love with the monster-next-door Kate, and befriends the rag-tag collection of residents including porn-addicted Trekkie Monster, closet homosexual Rod and failed comedian Brian.
The songs are still catchy and the jokes are sharp, but compared to seeing the show back in 2006 (when it first arrived in the West End), one can't shake the feeling that some of the satire is now distinctly tired. “The Internet is for Porn” may have been on the money when the show was conceived, but now it's old news, while a passing reference to George Bush may garner cheers from the faithful, but engender a feeling in the rest of us that this is a show that wasn't expecting to stick around so long.
But if the material has grown slightly limp, the cast are anything but. Julie Atherton proves why she has such a long association with Kate Monster/Lucy the Slut (Atherton is the only returning member of the original West End cast), while Princeton/Rod fit Any Dream Will Do finalist Daniel Boys like a glove (geddit?) - proving why he picked up the Best Takeover gong at this year's Whatsonstage.com awards. And Mark Goldthorp deserves special mention for his gormless comic turn as Trekkie Monster/Nicky and one half of the 'bad bear' duo.
Even though it isn't quite the breath of fresh air it once was, Avenue Q remains high on my West End recommended list, and it's good to know we don't have to wave goodbye to it just yet - with the premature closure of Spring Awakening, it's now the lone standard-bearer for off-beat and affordable young musicals in the West End.
- Theo Bosanquet
NOTE: The following THREE STAR review dates from June 2006 and this production's original opening at the West End's Noel Coward Theatre.
One cannot be completely sure, but I think there’s a song in the puppets-for-grown-ups show at the re-named Noel Coward Theatre (formerly the Albery) that comments on a chap’s girlfriend in Canada who’s been in Vancouver and sucks like a Hoover.
The great joy of Jim Henson’s Muppets was their totally unpredictable irreverence about each other, and humans. Avenue Q goes even further down this route, showing us a cosy little Brooklyn community where it would be okay to be gay (especially if you were reading a book about musicals), where the Internet is for porn, according to the big furry monster (“rub your dick and double click”), and where “everyone’s a little bit racist”. X-rated puppetry is a wonderful new concept, a far cry from Andy Pandy coming to play, or Bill and Ben exclaiming “fer-lub-a-lub” or “weed”. (Actually, what the hell were they talking about?)
From its modest origins three years ago as an idea for television that hit the stage by accident at the Vineyard Theatre in New York, Avenue Q has been an unexpected Tony-winning triumph for its writers Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx (music and lyrics) and Jeff Whitty (book) and for its director Jason Moore, who is now getting serious and preparing Shrek: The Musical for Sam Mendes.
This is the outrageous cartoon world of The Simpsons and South Park, a place where free thought and liberation are the price of being a dummy. There’s a sense in which the puppets, existing only at the end of a manipulator’s arm, embody our own best idea of ourselves. The constant meditation we undertake in this balancing act between humanity and the inanimate is similar to how we view Greek tragedy through masks.
We’re so mesmerised by the trick of it all, that it would be easy to overlook the brilliance of the art behind the charade. I became incidentally fascinated by the vocal ingenuity of Julie Atherton as the main man Princeton’s girlfriend, Kate Monster (doubled with Lucy the Slut), as opposed to the almost totally dumb performance of beautiful redhead Clare Foster as various other characters; her voices come from another actor, mostly. And then again, Ann Harada as a Japanese therapist called Christmas Eve is an entirely human presence whose coy pronouncements would be too much coming from a puppet but are oddly appropriate in her drolly articulating mouth.
There are a few problems. Surely no English audience has the remotest idea about the identity of a black former child star called Gary Coleman (Giles Terera, so marvellous in George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s Honk! at the National a few years ago) who is the community’s superintendent and handyman. And the second act is definitely inferior to the first, and not, as Kenneth Tynan once famously said of Gypsy, because it tapers off into mere brilliance after the interval.
It just goes a little downhill, partly because the material is less good, but chiefly because we have got the point of it all by now, and we feel like moving on to the next port of call, thanks all the same. Still, I haven’t laughed so much since Sooty and Sweep had a teatime television threesome with sweet little Soo. Full-on graphic sex between consenting puppets must be the way forward.
i saw this in vegas few years back and thought it was ok ,have seen west end version in each of its homes , and think uk version is far superior, always a great cast each bring something new to each character julie atherton was amazing ,but cassidy janson brings new colours too . dont know his name but tall blonde guy used to play nicky was best ever , this is a fun show !! not afraid to laugh at its self and make fun of everyone , which in this current climate we need , shame its closing , but i could see this touring the u.k for at least the next year . - rob g
15 Jul 10
Third time of seeing the show. I do miss Julie Atherton who was just wonderful as Kate/Lucy; but it's still laugh out loud funny with a great cast. So glad it's still going strong. - Quentin
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