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Theater Review: "Avenue Q" At The Pantages

Tom Dotan |
March 3, 2011 | 12:45 p.m. PST

Associate News Editor

Photo by John Daughtry (courtesy of Broadway/L.A.
Photo by John Daughtry (courtesy of Broadway/L.A.

Who would have thought that a musical about broken dreams, sexual identity crises, economic futility, odes to other’s misfortunes — sung largely by horny puppets and Gary Coleman — would become such a Broadway brand? 

Tragically early cancellation? Most definitely. A cult hit with a smirking in-crowd? Without a doubt. But a massive hit right off the bat with top awards, a six-year run, many national tours including permanent showings in West End and The Wynn in Las Vegas, and a New York reopening off-Broadway that could run well into the next century? 

Wachoo talkin’ ’bout Willis!

Yet this is exactly where "Avenue Q" finds itself eight years after opening off-Broadway, and now having a local run at The Pantages until Sunday. There’s a sense in the audience that many here have often walked down this street before, and the rest were probably not coming in too cold. Perhaps they were undergraduate English majors battered incessantly throughout college by the formers to see this show because, oh my God, they totally have a song you’d love. It’s just about you!

That song, of course, is “What do you do with a B.A. in English?” and it opens the show. Princeton, a newly graduated 22-year-old, is the owner of that useless degree, and he sings it while moving onto Avenue Q. It’s a downtrodden section of New York, described in the program as being “an outer borough” although they could just save themselves the time and call it Queens. 

Soon Princeton meets the other crewmates aboard the S.S. Self Pity. There’s Kate Monster, who hates her job as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant; Christmas Eve, a Japanese immigrant and an unsuccessful therapist (in that order); Brian, her slovenly deadbeat boyfriend; Rod, an investment banker and closeted homosexual who lives with his slacker roommate Nicky; and Trekkie Monster, a masturbator extraordinaire.

Oh, and Gary Coleman, who is the super of the building.

Princeton loses his job day one and is thrown headfirst into the post-collegiate malaise that has no doubt produced each and every one of these slobs. He soon makes a connection with Kate Monster, who dreams in her despair of opening her own school for monsters. Their relationship provides most of the plot and drama in the show. Are they friends or something more? And can the two reconcile their hopes for something better with the neighborhood’s corrosive cynicism?

Their story is plodding, staid and probably just above the minimal tension required for this thing to call itself a certifiable show. Mostly the dialogue is there to be a vehicle to bring the musical where it really wants to be: a demented Sesame Street.

If there’s a certain familiarity with “Avenue Q” at this point, it takes away only slightly from the raunchy, sardonic humor. Elements like characters joyfully singing “It Sucks To Be Me” don’t shock as much as they originally did. Nor does an ode to schadenfreude, which comes too late in the show for the can you believe they’re singing about this? laughter it wants.

Although the program states that this debauchery takes place in present day, there is a bygone sense in many of the references. It’s unlikely that a recent college graduate would make a mix-tape (or mix-CD, as it were) for a girl, as Princeton does Kate Monster. Today he’d rather send over a couple of neat torrents. And knowledge about Internet pornography is so common, Trekkie Monster’s “Internet is for Porn” lacks most of the shameful revelatory quality it once must have held.

Thankfully, jokes about now-dead Gary Coleman don’t verge too much on the grave dancing they could have been. But there is a new, queasy edge to the laughter that the show’s writers Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx probably never intended.

The biggest laughs come from the puppeteering anyway. This cast, many of whom are “Avenue Q” veterans and experts at making puppets have sex, carry this production along energetically. All the physical comedy bits are deftly handled and the puppet choreography (is that what you even call it?) is hilarious, particularly Michael Liscio and Kerri Bracken handling of Nicky's Broadway grandstanding during “If You Were Gay.” The full-time humans acquit themselves nicely too, with Lisa Helmi Johonson’s sharp and and witty Christmas Eve a standout.

If parts of “Avenue Q” feel dated, they land more in the realm of nostalgia than obsolete. In fact, the effect is akin to watching reruns of early "South Park" when the show was less about political satire and more about third-graders saying dirty things.

This cross-medium connection isn’t too far out. "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have just collaborated with Lopez on an upcoming musical about Mormons. No puppets perform, but there should be a lot of swearing.

Lopez asserts in “Avenue Q” that Princeton is based on his own experiences trying to find his life’s purpose after college. Although the musical ends on an undecided note as to whether he finds it, we learn from Lopez’s success that nothing stays bad forever. There’s hope for Princeton yet.

Contact Associate News Editor Tom Dotan here.



 

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