Avenue Q

A deceptively complicated show to stage technically, I’ve heard Avenue Q described as “Sesame Street for Adults”  and “A profane, next generation Muppet Show”.  Working to a recipe of complicated choreography for puppeteers and puppets, complex demands on acting, dancing and vocal skills, sound projection, video production and feeds and a rather stunning set, Wells Little Theatre produced a theatrical delicacy to delight the taste buds of any theatregoer. 

There’s nothing like seeing a theatre group really challenge their own skills and break new ground. The demands that a musical like Avenue Q lay down are many and varied. Director Nick Barlow and his incredible technical team and cast made it all look easy. 

The show is set in a less than salubrious downtown block and begins with the integration of puppet and human inhabitants as they compare their futile existences in a brilliantly funny opening number entitled, Sucks to be Me. Princeton, an unemployed Eng Lit grad, is looking for a purpose and finds it by falling in love with Kate Monster. She, in turn, is a kindergarten teacher who wants to found her own school. 

Meanwhile other locals have humbler desires: uptight Rod yearns for a male partner, Lucy The Slut,  for wall-to-wall sex and Trekkie Monster for uninterrupted internet porn. Clearly not a show for the easily offended or, indeed, children. 

There is easy interaction of people and puppets; included in the cast is one human couple, a would-be comic and his Chinese wife. Their antics and lives cement the community as they effortlessly socialise with their furry neighbours. Both players threw themselves into these roles with real energy, finesse and some bravery! 

Let me just say what it was like to be in the audience of this show in Wells.  

I began by watching the human operators of the puppets, my eyes however were drawn to the puppets for confirmation that the operator had the lines correct!

I watched as the incredibly well executed and considered choreography began with the puppet but ended with the human – it was a fascinating and brilliant partnership or in the case of the 2-opperator characters, mini ensembles. 

I fell about laughing, sometimes until I cried as did my neighbours either side of me. I giggled long after each joke and went home with the tunes still ringing in my ears. 

While this speaks of an inspired script and libretto, this really only does some of the work. This team picked up something good and made it truly memorable. The comic timing, voice and gestures of all the operators was superb – the singing vocals were wonderful, the accents and the very well-established voices of each of the puppet characters really did make you feel like you’d stumbled onto the Muppet set. 

The handling of the complicated (and frankly) hilarious love-scene, the unbelievable tension of Rod’s assertions about his fictitious girlfriend and the weekend he had planned, the evilness of the bad-idea bears and the brutal honesty of Trekkie Monster and how he thought the internet was best used. 

I want to pick out each member of the cast but I can’t – each and every member should be thoroughly proud of their performance and the team that supported it. 

The set depicted a street where characters went in and out of their homes and turned their lights on and off both upstairs and downstairs – it had characters also appearing out of first floor windows too. – it was further enhanced by two screens which depicted various “adverts” as well as letting the audience know the position in the loo queue that the puppets had reached by the end of the interval!!

This was a tremendous show, uplifting, wicked, hilarious and imaginatively and energetically conceived – I’d go and see it again at the drop of a hat. 

Congratulations, guys!

Katie Jones

NODA 

Any observation made by the reviewer can only be based on what they see at the performance in question.  The reviewer may have received information in advance of the performance, and it is inevitable that their assessment will be affected by that knowledge.

The N.O.D.A. Representative’s intention is to give an objective critique of the overall production and in particular the performance viewed.  It should be remembered that any review of this nature can only be objective as far as the techniques used during the performance observed.  Any criticisms expressed may not have been valid at other

performances and are only made to encourage higher standards in Amateur Theatre.

It is hoped that the audience’s appreciation of your efforts will have given everyone a lift and encouraged you to greater achievements in the future and that the observations made by the reviewer will prove helpful in improving future productions.

 

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