If you go to one musical this summer, make it Avenue Q. (As long as you can handle muppets making jokes about Bjs, racism and Harper.)
Libidos are high and self-esteem is low in this R-rated take on Sesame Street. What started as an Off-Broadway hit for creators Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx in 2003, the coming-of-age parable went on to Broadway and London's West End, raking in awards along the way.
Directed by Peter Jorgenson, the Arts Club Theatre production is brought to life by a phenomenal cast using puppets and video projections, the irreverent script skewering the outside world's optimistic outlook.
Avenue Q is 16 letters away from where you want to live. Needles and garbage line the gutters of the ramshackle New York neighbourhood (designed by Jessie award-winner Marshall McMahen), home to a melting pot of the dissatisfied and disillusioned. Not even the buildings can play it straight in this skeptical environment, but a fresh face in the form of the young puppet Princeton forces his new friends to re-evaluate their purpose in life.
Kindergarten teacher Kate has a 'monster'-sized chip on her shoulder; best friends and roomies Nicky and Rod (borrowing heavily from Ernie and Bert) aren't exactly on the same page (and have such a realistic relationship that you'll feel a tug at the heartstrings when one become disappointed with the other); and then there's Trekkie Monster, whose weakness is definitely not cookies.
Backed by a discreet four-piece band, standard motivational clichés make way for songs such as "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", "It Sucks To Be Me" and "Schadenfreude."
The play's full puppet nudity (aka puppet porn) has received a lot of press, but that isn't nearly the highlight of the superlative production. Like the premise of Sesame Street, puppets interact with humans, but in Avenue Q, the actors aren't hiding off-screen. Rather, they are directly alongside the puppets they are bringing to life. You'll find yourself delightfully torn over whether to stay trained on the puppet or the person beside it.
More than half of the dexterous cast manipulate multiple puppets while belting out the musical numbers and shaking their tail feathers with aplomb.
Veteran Vancouver stage presence Scott Bellis embodies three drastically different puppet roles: the one-track minded Trekkie Monster, the sweetly sincere Nicky and the blue Bad Idea Bear (who pops up with his yellow twin to playfully suggest solutions such as suicide and six-packs of beer for life's little problems). Kayla Dunbar plays the idealistic Kate Monster and the home-wrecker Lucy with equal measures of sass. Princeton and Rod are energetically played by Andrew MacDonald-Smith in his Vancouver début. And Jeny Cassady gets friendly with the puppets in all the right ways as right-hand gal to many of the actors' puppeteering needs (she also nails her speaking parts).
Round the furry foibles out with flesh-and-blood supporting actors (Shannon Chan-Kent, Evangelia Kambites and Andy Toth) and you have a hit.
While it's unfortunate that people had to be turned away at the box office on the sold-out opening night (June 26), the good news is the production runs until September 14, when it must close. ArtsClub.com
You can follow arts reporter Kelsey Klassen on Twitter @kelseyklassen.
