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| | Production photos by Carol Rosegg | |
Review by Tulis McCall
(21 Oct 2009)
Oh, just go see this show. This is not a cute kids show with puppets. It’s a hilarious and immensely thoughtful musical for people who have lived more than 12 or so years.
I saw this show nearly six years ago and got a chance to see it again because Avenue Q has moved uptown to 50th Street. How great is that? The show has only gotten better. The theater is more intimate. You can take your drink to your seat, and if you don’t, there are waiters who will take your order and bring your beverage of choice back to you. Drinks and puppets! Who knew?
Avenue Q is the address where people and puppets are neighbors. These neighbors are ALL in the middle of “What is going on with my life!!??” Subjects covered in this small block on Avenue Q include: A B.A. in English, Betrayal, Commitment, Denial, Dreams, Education, Friendship, Growing Up, Homosexuality, Immigration, Intercourse, the Internet, Love and Hate, Masturbation, Money, Monsters, Pornography, Purpose, Racism, Sex, Sexual Identity, True Love - and Fox News. Any of these strike a nerve with you? And with songs like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", "If You Were Gay That Would Be Okay" and "The More You Love Someone, The More You Want to Kill Them" - how can you go wrong?
In Avenue Q everyone is visible, and your eye wanders back and forth between puppet and human. There are three actors without puppets, four puppeteers who are also fabulous actors and singers, and 10 or so puppets. The puppeteers are dressed in neutral tones but they are front and center. At first you don’t know who to watch, but after awhile it all blends together, like an Escher print come alive.
Using puppets skews the angle of delivery and reception in theatre. Europeans have known and embraced this for years. International Puppetry Festivals are mob scenes that include people who don't get by on their looks but on their skill as fantasy conductors. Puppeteers make big ideas bite sized. Instead of thinking outside the box, they talk to it.
Because this is not television, we don’t need the two hardly used plasma screens o or Gary Coleman (from Different Strokes) to be the superintendent of the block. Coleman is also played by a woman – why?
These details aside - I laughed out loud at this show – then and now. I even got a little faklempt as the show closed with one of those old fashioned reassuring and uplifting tunes. I didn’t want to leave these folks. But then, I was brought up on Kookla, Fran and Ollie. I dated Big Bird. I have been a puppeteer. I know this planet.
So go see Avenue Q. You will laugh. You will think. You will reflect on your life in new ways that surprise you. And you will become a puppet person. Guaranteed.
(Tulis McCall)
What the popular press said...
"They may have no legs of their own, but darned if those fuzzy creatures aren’t still standing, long after more full-bodied competition has bitten the dust."
Ben Brantley for the New York Times
"Avenue Q is still one of the hippest theatrical destinations in New York"
David Sheward for Back Stage
"Returning to its Off Broadway origins, the 2004 Tony winner shows no discernible signs of downsizing and no loss of heart."
David Rooney for Variety
External links to full reviews from popular press...
New York Times -
Back Stage -
Variety
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