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Published on 8/29/08
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It may be modeled on Sesame Street and The Electric Company, the shows its creators grew up on in the ’70s and ’80s, but gleefully bawdy Avenue Q speaks just as clearly to the Romper Room and Barney generations. Anyone who’s found himself reaching tentative, flailing adulthood can understand that the appeal of friendly puppets with life lessons is viable long past kindergarten.
Finally making an all-too-brief appearance in Chicago, Avenue Q is the story of being young, overeducated and underemployed in the city—and it’s specific to that urban experience; it’s no wonder it didn’t work in boomer-trap Vegas. Princeton arrives on the scene with a college degree and zero prospects (“What do you do with a B.A. in English?” he sings, a refrain familiar to every liberal arts major ever) and rents an apartment from former child star Gary Coleman, who’s reduced to serving as Avenue Q’s super. Princeton and his neighbors go through all the uncertainties of young adulthood in kids-show vignette fashion.
Lopez, Marx and Whitty’s adult-reoriented tweaks of TV conventions are masterful, and Moore’s tight direction is full of invention. Avenue Q straddles a lot of lines: nostalgic and modern; offensive and touching; cynical and sincere. If ever a show could be called “sweetly raunchy,” this is it. The touring cast, led by perfect innocents Robert McClure and Kelli Sawyer, is superb. Sunny days, indeed.
