AVENUE Q • LONDON
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Matt Crokett
REVIEW AVENUE Q: NAUGHTY CULT HIT IN 20TH-ANNIVERSARY LONDON REVIVAL
The shamelessly raunchy Avenue Q shares its comedic DNA with The Book of Mormon, and that’s no coincidence. Both are the brainchild of Robert Lopez, the 51-year-old Manhattan-born New Yorker with Filipino roots who has already scored a double EGOT: Winner of Emmy + Grammy + Oscar + Tony Award twice. Take that.
Photo: Matt Crokett
The musical Avenue Q, created in 2003 with Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty, has just returned to the West End for a 20th-anniversary revival in a sexually provocative, musically sharp, and still thoroughly irreverent version. The show is playing at the Shaftesbury Theatre in a high-energy new production featuring the original Broadway puppets and the original creative team.
Photo: Matt Crokett
Avenue Q is something as zany as a hand-puppet musical that parodies The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. If you think it’s for kids, think again. The show is a cascade of sexist and racist crude humor designed to shock, bursts of laughter, and taboo humor, with a dramaturgy and musicality that are precise, well-crafted, and executed absolutely phenomenally live on stage by an impressively strong cast of hand-puppeteers who act and sing all the roles.
Photo: Matt Crokett
The story follows a nearly normal young guy named Princeton, fresh out of college with a hopelessly useless degree in English. His money only stretches to a run-down apartment on the dilapidated Avenue Q in New York. Here he meets a motley crew of neighbors—humans and “fur people”—all grappling with the big themes of adult life: love, work, identity, hope, and powerlessness.
The characters, all of whom are puppets—except for the building superintendent, a former child star—come together in a chaotic opening scene, each delivering their own wild autobiographical verses in the completely crazy intro hit It Sucks To Be Me. The audience is in stitches after less than two minutes.
Princeton chases his purpose in life while getting himself into financial trouble, emotional entanglements, and romantic misunderstandings.
Photo: Matt Crokett
Along the way, all the characters cross paths in increasingly wild scenarios, including a steamy date with a doll-bang of hysterical proportions that leaves the Shaftesbury Theatre in fits of laughter, until the story culminates in a warm and touching realization:
Photo: Matt Crokett
No one has a clue, but we’ll make it through anyway—together. Everyone ends up getting kicked out of their apartments, but the day is saved by the perpetually horny Trekkie, who is obsessed with internet porn and ends up buying the entire avenue for the $10 million he turns out to have earned from fan investments in the web porn industry. The point is driven home in the show’s final, philosophically inclined song It’s Only For Now. Crises come and go. Remember to enjoy life, community, and love. Believe it or not: It actually ends up being quite touching.
The show is a cult classic, and if you’re a fan of the universe, you’ll love the new staging, not least for the original Broadway puppets and Jason Moore back at the helm.
Even skeptics must acknowledge the raw, uninhibited satire that still feels fresh and contemporary.
Photo: Matt Crokett
The music delivers big time. The energy, precision, and the talented ensemble make Lopez/Marx’s intelligent musical numbers stand out sharply.
The puppetry is thoroughly impressive. The combination of puppetry and acting is both technically sublime and emotionally surprising.
All in all, a completely different, fast-paced, and shamelessly entertaining evening at the musical theater, earning four stars from GOT TO SEE THIS.
