Avenue Q

Published: 6th June 2014

After having listened, sang along to and laughed at the sound track to Avenue Q more than a few times, it was finally time to see the show at Leeds Grand Theatre, courtesy of my wife.

For those of you who haven’t seen Avenue Q and/or don’t know what it is, let me summarise it like so … imagine Sesame Street aimed at an adult audience. In fact some of the characters are direct parodies of the of Sesame Street characters with Trekkie Monster being a parody of Cookie Monster and Nicky and Rod being parodies of Bert and Earnie. As with Sesame Street, the cast is made up of both human characters and puppet characters with some of the actors controlling multiple puppets.

I was amazed by how expressive the cast managed to make puppets and how they managed to expand on that with their own expressions. They effectively turned both puppet and the puppeteer into a single character. In some cases the puppets would have two puppeteers, both puppeteers expressed the puppet’s emotions The performances of the cast were simply outstanding.

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.

I would wholeheartedly recommend seeing this show. I spent most of the show laughing at the jokes or wanting to sing along to the songs. My wife and I definitely want to see it again, and she’s seen it three times already!