OK, let me be honest. This isn't a review of the
currently-previewing-in-the-West-End Avenue Q; I haven't seen it. I'm
going to - but I haven't yet. However, as I am a public-spirited kind of a chap,
and I feel people should know about this show, I'm reviewing the Broadway
production I saw last year...
...Avenue Q tells the story of Princeton, a young graduate starting
life in New York City, and his money problems, romantic entanglements, and
attempts to find his purpose in life. He is helped through all this by the
fellow residents of Avenue Q, a run-down street in the rougher end of town.
OK, so far, so unexciting. Why should anyone go to see this clearly mundane
show? One word: PUPPETS. Whilst in no way endorsed by the Henson mob,
Avenue Q is, essentially, Sesame Street with full-frontal
(puppet) nudity. And it's brilliant. The cast is, like Sesame Street, a
combination of puppets and real people, and while the actors manipulating the
puppets are clearly visible at all times - and sometimes swap puppets
onstage - the illusion holds. Indeed, it works to the extent that most
men in the audience will feel oddly drawn to the vampish Lucie T Slut, despite
the fact she's clearly made of felt.
The main plotline does creak in the second half, but by then you'll either
have been won over by the magnificently funny songs - The Internet Is
For Porn, If You Were Gay, The More You Love Someone (The More
You Want To Kill Them), and in particular the wonderful Everyone's A
Little Bit Racist ("Ethnic jokes may be uncouth / But we laugh because
they're based on truth") - or you're dead inside. The subplots are far stronger,
and keep the show's momentum going all the way through, when the redemptive
power of hardcore pornography ends up saving the day.
The combination of impressively filthy writing and wide-eyed puppet innocence
is winning, and come the end you'll really care about, for example, whether Rod
will ever come out of the closet. You will also have experienced extremely
graphic and prolonged sex between puppets (almost as excessive as the sex scene
in Team America), and will bounce out onto the street full of joy and
optimism. And if that's not the point of musical theatre, I don't know what
is.
