Avenue Q
Avenue Q is a musical comedy featuring puppets and human actors with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and book by Jeff Whitty. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards. The show's format is a parody of Sesame Street, but its content involves adult-oriented themes. It has been praised for its approach to themes of racism, homosexuality and internet pornography.
For the former Avenue Q in Brooklyn, New York, see List of lettered Brooklyn avenues.Avenue Q
- Robert Lopez
- Jeff Marx
- 2003 Off-Broadway
- 2003 Broadway
- 2005 Las Vegas
- 2006 West End
- 2009 Off-Broadway
- Various touring and international productions (see below)
The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 at the Vineyard Theatre, co-produced by the Vineyard Theatre and The New Group. In July of that same year, the show moved to the John Golden Theatre on Broadway, where it ran until 2009, playing for over 2,500 performances.[1] It transferred to the off-Broadway New World Stages within weeks of ending its Broadway run, where it played until 2019; together, the two productions played 6,569 performances.[2] Major productions have been staged in Las Vegas and the West End, and the musical has been staged and toured in several countries around the world. A school-friendly script has been produced.
The principal cast includes four puppeteers and three human actors. The puppet characters, Princeton, Kate, Nicky, and others, are played by the unconcealed puppeteers as the costumed human actors interact with the puppets.
Background and structure[edit]
Avenue Q's cast consists of three human characters who interact with eleven puppet characters. The puppets are animated and voiced by puppeteers who appear on stage, unconcealed. The puppet and human characters ignore the puppeteers, creating the illusion that the puppets are alive. To assist with the illusion, the puppeteers wear plain gray clothing in contrast to the human and puppet characters' colorful costumes. The same puppet may be operated by different puppeteers in different scenes, and the actor voicing the puppet may be, at times, not the one animating it. One puppeteer sometimes voices two or more puppets simultaneously. Conversely, the so-called "live-hands" puppets require two puppeteers – again, in full view of the audience.
The show draws inspiration from and imitates the format of children's educational television show Sesame Street. Marx interned at the program early in his career, and all four of the original cast's principal puppeteers – John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Jennifer Barnhart and Rick Lyon – were Sesame Street performers (D'Abruzzo returned to Sesame Street after leaving Avenue Q[3]). Three of the puppet characters are direct recognizable parodies of Sesame Street puppets: Roommates Rod and Nicky are a riff on Bert and Ernie,[4] while Trekkie Monster bears the distinctive voice and disposition of Cookie Monster, though not his obsession with baked goods. (The production officially disclaims any connection with either Sesame Workshop or The Jim Henson Company.)[5]
All of the characters (puppet and human) are young adults who face real-world problems with uncertain solutions, as opposed to the simplistic problems and invariably happy resolutions encountered by characters on children's television programming. Much of the show's ironic humor emerges from its contrasts with Sesame Street, including the differences between innocent childhood experiences and complex adulthood. The storyline presupposes the existence of "monsters" and talking animals, and human actors sing, dance and interact with puppets, both human and non-human, as if they were sentient beings, in a light-hearted, quasi-fantasy environment. However, the characters use a considerable amount of profanity, and puppet nudity and sex are portrayed. The show addresses adult themes, such as racism, pornography, coming out, and schadenfreude.
The story does not explain why three of the human characters are portrayed by human actors, while other characters intended to be perceived as humans are puppets.[6] One human character is a fictionalized version of the real-life celebrity Gary Coleman, the juvenile actor who played Arnold Jackson in the 1980s American sitcom Diff'rent Strokes and later famously sued his parents and business advisers for stealing his earnings.[7] Coleman is portrayed (by a woman in most productions) as an adult, who happens to be the building superintendent in the run-down Avenue Q neighborhood due to his dire financial situation. Marx and Lopez said that they originally intended to offer the Gary Coleman role to Coleman himself, and he expressed interest in accepting it, but did not show up for a meeting scheduled to discuss it. They stated that the character illustrates "one of the most important themes in Avenue Q ... that life isn't as easy as we've been led to believe".[8] Coleman threatened to sue Avenue Q producers for their depiction of him, but ultimately he did not.[9]
When Coleman died on May 28, 2010, casts of both the Off-Broadway production in New York City and the second national tour in Dallas dedicated that evening's performances to his memory.[10][11] The Coleman character remains in the show with modified dialogue.[12]
History[edit]
Jeff Marx met Robert Lopez at a songwriting class at the BMI Workshop.[30] As part of the workshop, the two decided to write songs for a speculative Muppet movie based on "Hamlet" called Kermit, Prince of Denmark. Encouraged by the class response to their songs, they decided to have someone actually performing a puppet present a song, since they were writing them for puppets. Through mutual friends, they contacted Rick Lyon, who agreed to perform Kermit singing a song in their class. He performed a Kermit replica puppet while sitting on a stool in full view of the audience. This visible puppeteer approach became a key component of Avenue Q. Kermit, Prince of Denmark was pitched to, but was ultimately turned down by, the Henson family.[31] The duo then decided to create a new show, with original puppet characters, which was a parody of Sesame Street. Lyon created the puppets.[32] Avenue Q was originally conceived as a show for television, but following a public reading presented for potential producers/investors in 2000, Broadway producers Robyn Goodman and Jeffrey Seller expressed interest in developing it into a theatrical property.[26]
Productions[edit]
Off-Broadway[edit]
Avenue Q ran Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre for 72 performances from March 20 through May 4, 2003, with previews from February 19. The musical won the 2003 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical and Outstanding Sound Design (Brett Jarvis). It was nominated for the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Director (Jason Moore), Outstanding Choreographer (Ken Roberson) and Outstanding Scenic Design (Anna Louizos).[33] It won the 2003–2004 Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding Ensemble Performance and Puppet Artistry and the 2004 GLAAD Media Award, Outstanding New York Theater: Broadway and Off-Broadway[34]
Avenue Q: School Edition[edit]
Avenue Q and Music Theatre International collaborated on the Avenue Q: School Edition to facilitate production of the musical by high school drama departments. Most of the profanity and sexual themes are removed from the script and score, and two songs ("My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada" and "You Can Be As Loud as the Hell You Want") are removed. "The Internet Is for Porn" is replaced with "My Social Life Is Online", and Trekkie's obsession with pornography is replaced by an obsession with social networking sites. The characters Mrs. Thistletwat and Lucy the Slut are renamed Mrs. Butz and Lucy, respectively. The scenes involving the Bad Idea Bears are altered to deemphasize alcohol.[63][64]
Original Broadway cast recording[edit]
The original cast recording was made on August 10, 2003, at Right Track Studio A in New York City, produced by Jay David Saks for RCA Victor. The album contains almost all of the music from the show, with the original Broadway cast and orchestra. Released on October 6, 2003, it has been in the top ten of the Billboard Top Cast Album Chart since the chart's launch on January 12, 2006.[73] It was nominated in the Musical Show Album category for a 2004 Grammy Award.[74] According to Playbill, it was likely the first cast recording to use a Parental Advisory label.[75]
Critical reception[edit]
Avenue Q received nearly unanimous favorable reviews, both nationally and internationally.
The New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley called it a "...savvy, sassy and eminently likable...breakthrough musical", and compared its potential long-term influence to West Side Story and The King and I.[76] The New Yorker described it as "...an ingenious combination of 'The Real World' and Sesame Street".[77] The Times described it as "...how Friends might be if it had Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy arguing about their one-night stand, but with more angst, expletives and full-on puppet sex."[78]
Avenue Q made Entertainment Weekly's 2010 end-of-the-decade "best-of" list: "This 2003 smash musical is Sesame Street for grown-ups, with filthy-minded puppets who teach useful lessons like 'The Internet Is for Porn.' Somewhere, Big Bird is molting."[79]