Skip to main content

Avenue Q

King's Theatre, Edinburgh
Four stars
It doesn't matter how wilfully potty-mouthed it gets, there's something
delightfully and reassuringly old-fashioned about Robert Lopez, Jeff
Marx and Jeff Whitty's scurrilous Sesame Street inspired hit puppet
musical. This is despite a set of furry characters who not only swear,
but have one-night stands, screw each other over and mess up their
lives in a manner that would make Kermit The Frog blush.

As wide-eyed but unemployed English graduate Princeton moves into the
down-at-heel but colourful multi-cultural boulevard of broken dreams
that gives the show its title, the monsters that occupy it are either
porn-crazed sociopaths, in-the-closet queens, slutty night-club singers
or, like Princeton's neighbour Kate, a love-lorn school-teacher. The
people aren't much better, not even down on his luck real life child
star of kids TV favourite Diff'rent Strokes Gary Coleman, here played
by a woman.

Cressida Carre's touring revival for the team behind the increasingly
enterprising Sell A Door company doesn't mess with this formula in a
production that puts eleven people, including four puppeteers, onstage
with an entire community of pastel-coloured creations. With a set of
1970s TV sit-com style show-tunes dominating, where Sesame Street –
whose creators don't have anything to do with Avenue Q in any way – was
borne of an inner-city counter-cultural melting pot, Lopez, Marx and
Whitty's  show is part austerity culture slacker comedy, part seemingly
politically incorrect post South Park cartoon giving the world the
finger.  In the end, with the puppeteers doubling up as a chorus line
as everything comes good for Princeton, Kate and the gang, both come
from the same sentimental and gloriously harmonious place.

The Herald, June 12th 2014


ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL