Reviewed: Avenue Q @ Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide

When all you want is great fun, lots of laughter and a warm glow in your heart, Avenue Q is the answer. A musical that is not only entertaining, hilarious, and thoroughly enjoyable, it also provides a social conscience that you can live with.

It’s hard to know what to expect going to a puppet show. It’s even harder when that puppet show is not suitable for children. I heard Avenue Q was risqué, funny, a bit on the taboo side of life and definitely worth seeing. So with that knowledge (I really had no idea) I set off to see Avenue Q at the Majestic Theatre in Adelaide. The seats we booked were right at the front, which made me a touch nervous, and therefore quite anxious to get there on time and well settled in.

The stage is set in a New York scene: a street with several houses within which each of the characters live. The difference with this show is that the puppeteers are on stage and acting with their respective puppets. At the beginning of the show I was watching both actor and puppet, but as the show went on I found myself more and more drawn to watching the puppets.

In a nutshell, this show is simply brilliant. The central theme running through it is how society tries to hide behind its failures and embarrassment, yet these things are all completely normal. Each character portrays a different theme - Rod is an investment banker and ‘closeted homo whatever’ who acts very gay but refuses to admit that he is gay. Nicky, his housemate, tries to reassure him that being gay is okay, while at the same time reassuring him that he is not gay. Nicky ends up on the streets and has to beg, probing society’s attitude towards charity and the homeless.

Princeton, fresh faced, full of enthusiasm and just out of college gets his first job. He rents a house on Avenue Q only to be told that due to down-sizing he has now lost his job before he even got to start. Time slips by very quickly and before you know it, 10 or 15 years has gone by and people find themselves not becoming what they dreamt they would. So Princeton, determined to find the elusive purpose for his life meets his girlfriend Kate Monster, gets drunk by listening to the Bad Idea Bears and ends up shagging Kate Monster in various positions while Gary Coleman sings You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want while making love. The show covers the topics of racism, sexuality, charity, pornography, love, homosexuality, unemployment, homelessness and life. The hilarious star of the show is without doubt Trekkie Monster.

Life sucks on Avenue Q, and having the ability to laugh at others' misfortune helps to get you by. Other characters include Brian, the hopeless unemployed comedian who is married to Christmas Eve, the Asian therapist; Gary Coleman as the buildings superintendent; the porn star Lucy T Slut and the very cute and cheekily hilarious Bad Idea Bears.

Avenue Q has won the Tony Award Best Musical and is written by Jeff Whitty, with music by Robert Lopez and lyrics by Jeff Marx. Songs like Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist, The Internet Is For Porn, I’m Not Wearing Underpants Today and If You Were Gay will leave you with a pain in your face from laughing so much. A pure pleasure to watch from start to finish, I cannot recommend this highly enough and have to give it 5 stars for its cast, puppets, production, music and lyrics. Go see it!

by John Higginson

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