Avenue Q is wonderfully lawless chaos (with very rude puppets)
Avenue Q review and star rating: ★★★★
Could brainrot actually be good? Well, no: but if it were to take an IRL form, in many ways it would be Avenue Q.
The puppet musical has no significant overarching narrative. Instead, its main goal is to stitch together as many very silly jokes about willies and sex as it can. It is wondrously provocative, with one number satirising how the Jews have all the money and the whites all the power.
But thank goodness for that – in this climate, a show offering nothing weighty by way of storyline or meaty themes might well be the secret to a sellout. We all need a break, and blimey, Avenue Q knows that all too well. If you want more than gags about angry Asians or horny gays then look elsewhere.
Popularised in the early naughties when this first became a cult hit off-Broadway, there is a song entitled Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist in which Amelia Kinu Muus, who plays Christmas Eve, pulls up her eyelids to mimic an Asian person (she is of Japanese heritage). But it is a progressive song about how it’s helpful to acknowledge our biases.
Avenue Q: defiantly stupid
There is a very loosely strung together plot following the inhabitants of Avenue Q, a fictional street in New York, and the tensions that arise between the ‘people of fur’ and the human inhabitants.
We meet best friends Rod and Nicky, college graduate Princeton, kindergarten teaching assistant Kate Monster, vulgar recluse the Trekkie Monster and sultry cabaret provocateur Lucy the Slut. These characters are all puppet ‘fur’ beings but there are three human characters, comedian Brian and his wife the Japanese immigrant Christmas Eve, and building superintendent Gary.
There is a musical number about wanking in which puppeteers mimic the action while singing “grab your dick and double click” and a song called You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love) about hook-up culture.
The Internet is for Porn is a deliciously louche homage to masturbation sung by Cookie Monster rip-off Trekkie Monster (the whole thing is inspired by Sesame Street and the Muppets) and is defiantly stupid.
Unusually for puppeteering, the cast operating the puppets engage in eye contact with the audience. It’s the norm for practitioners to look at the puppet so as to draw the audience’s eyes on the object rather than the puppeteer. This style is designed to allow puppet and puppeteer exposure, but at points it’s hard to know where to look.
Nevertheless this is a masterly cast, who play a trifecta of roles as controller of the puppets, the voices of the puppet characters and then the real human characters. Emily Benjamin’s mesmeric, gravelly belt as Lucy the Slut particularly stands out, as does Noah Harrison’s charismatic, energetic turn as youngster Princeton.
When there is a message – about not growing up too soon, or being who you want to be – it is subtle. But mostly it’s just wonderful, lawless chaos.
Avenue Q plays at the Shaftesbury Theatre until 29 August
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