If you feel nostalgic when you think back to your childhood and remember staring up at the television set with pure elation when “Sesame Street” came on, you may want to consider heading over to Phoenix Theatre to go see “Avenue Q.”
It’s an R-rated, Tony Award-winning musical comedy with music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx and a book by Jeff Whitty.
“Avenue Q” tells the story of a recent college graduate named Princeton, played by Toby Yatso, who is struggling to find a job and his purpose in life. He moves into a small apartment in a not-so-great part of New York where he meets and befriends his new, eccentric neighbors.
In the show’s version of New York, puppets — or monsters — and humans live in harmony, and the colorful neighborhood of Avenue Q and its inhabitants creates a strong-yet-satirical resemblance to the Sesame Street world — except that the show is far from suitable for children.
While the puppets are cute, the set is vibrant and there is an educational quality to the production, there is also plenty of sex, drinking, drugs, cursing, full puppet nudity, and even a song about Internet pornography.
But it’s not just obscene for the sake of being obscene. “Avenue Q” will remind you of a few good life lessons, including following your heart, not giving up when things get hard and remembering that everyone has a purpose. The show has a lot of heart and some pretty hilarious one-liners.
Directed by Robert Kolby Harper, the Phoenix Theatre cast is brilliant. While it bothered me for a few minutes that there were actual people attached to all the of puppets the entire time (I don’t know what I was expecting), the actors did an incredible job of bringing their puppets to life and giving them original and entertaining personalities.
Harper calls the show “an honest, humorous and frank look at the time in your life when you have left college and move into adulthood. You set your sails to change the world and find yourself shipwrecked on the shores of disappointment.”
All of the characters, whether human or puppet, are multifaceted and amusing. All of them have a unique story to tell and even more unique opinions and ambitions. Even Gary Coleman moved into the neighborhood after his childhood stardom failed him.
Some of the best songs include “What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?,” “If You Were Gay,” “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist,” “The Internet is for Porn,” “I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today” and “You Can Be As Loud as the Hell You Want.”
And the only thing funnier than the song titles is seeing them performed live by Phoenix Theatre’s talented cast of actors and singers. The scenes can be a bit shocking, and the songs will have you laughing hysterically.
“Avenue Q” is perfect for those who want to explicitly relive a little piece of their childhood — or perhaps an even better show for the college upperclassman who wants to know what life is like once she’s done with school and the student loan bills come rolling in.
Either way, “Avenue Q” will be playing through May 18 on Phoenix Theatre’s Hormel Theatre stage. You can purchase tickets at the Phoenix Theatre website.
Contact the blogger at jasmine.barta@asu.edu
Editor’s note: Curtain Critic is the Downtown Devil weekly theater review.
