When:
March 25 – April 11
Where:
Chapel off Chapel
Directed
by: Stephen Wheat
Musical
Director: David Wisken
Performed
by: Kathleen Amarant, David Banen, Matar Dvir-Ovadia, Brett Fisher, Sarah
Golding, Nick Hedger, Andrew Houston, Todd Jacobsson, Zuleika Khan, Leah Lim,
Michael Lindner, Andy McDougall, Imogen Moore, Jordan Pollard, and Jeff van de
Zandt.
Choreography
by: Michael Ralph, Puppets by: Fenn Productions, Design by: Jacob Battista, Lighting by: Jason Bovaird, Sound by: Marcello Lo Ricco
Avenue Q would have to be one of the most
ambitious performances on the program for this years Melbourne International
Comedy Festival (MICF). Produced by
Trifle Theatre Company and presented at Chapel off Chapel it is also probably
the show with the highest production values you will see this festival.
Avenue Q is part puppetry, part live
performance with a full musical score.
It is something of a adult version parody of Sesame Street although it
claims no affiliation with Jim Henson or Sesame Street. It tells the tale of university graduate Princeton,
with his BA in Arts, who is done with college and ready to take on the world.
He moves into a shabby New York apartment in the only neighbourhood he can
afford, on Avenue Q. There, Princeton meets Kate (the monster next door), Rod
and Nicky (housemates bearing an uncanny resemblance to Bert and Ernie),
Trekkie Monster (a reclusive internet sexpert), and other colourful neighbours.
Together, they cope with their everyday struggles and help Princeton on his
voyage to discover his purpose in life.
Avenue Q addresses issues like sex, drinking, and surfing the web for
porn without subtlety or apology, so it is definitely not for children!
This production is performed with a 5 piece
band (who we never get to see, even at curtain call), comprising two keyboards,
a guitar, bass, drums, and reeds. The
band is truly excellent and big kudos to Wisken who manages to hold the entire
performance in perfect synchronicity of timing despite obviously being in a
less than ideal spot. I suspect he was
in Rod and Nicky’s house, but wherever he was, it is unlikely the performers
could see his conducting, so it was obviously upon him to keep the band in time
with the singers, no matter what they did.
I have to say, it was flawless!
Battista made some really clever set design
choices for this production. The musical
was performed in the Loft space, which
is quite small and an unexpected choice for a musical. He created facades for three two-storey
brownstown terraces, which form the upstage and left and right walls of the
performing space. It was a simple
choice, but effective and still allowed Wheat some choices in terms of staging.
I was not as impressed with the
costuming. Avenue Q has 7 characters who
are puppets and 3 who are human. All of
the puppets are manipulated live on stage by fully exposed puppeteers (who are
also the ‘actors’). In order to suspend
disbelief and not ‘see’ the puppeteers, they are supposed to be in black or
grey, and the ‘real’ people are supposed to be really colourful like the
puppets. Battista has created a
magnificent costume for Christmas Eve (Lim), but Gary Coleman (Khan) and Brian
(Lindner) are in faded blues, which really doesn’t bring them out from the
greys of the puppeteers. This made it
harder for the audience to create distinct lines of reality.
The puppets and puppeteering were overall
just magnificent. The puppets were
created by master puppeteer McDougall.
McDougall made the puppets in 2011 for the SLAMS production. I suspect they have been updated because Kate
Monster looked paler to me – which is a bit of a pity as more colour would have
strengthened the tolerance allegory of interspecies relationships.
As I said, the cast generally do a
magnificent job of the puppeteering, requiring a whole other level of
concentration on top of the usual singing/acting/dancing trilogy of the usual
musical theatre performer. Golding is
great as Kate Monster, and just magnificent at Lucy T. Slut. McDougall really does steal the show (or his
puppets do) as Nicky and Trekkie Monster.
You can really tell this man knows his craft and he also has an
amazingly versatile and compelling singing voice. I never thought I could feel affection for
someone (or something) singing a song like ‘The Internet is For Porn’.
My favourite puppets were probably the Bad
Idea Bears (Amarant & Fisher) who pop up and convince Princeton to spend
all his money and Kate Monster to go out and party rather than prepare for work
the next day. Princeton ends up broke
and desperate for work, and Kate Monster loses her job.
The only disappointing performance was that
of Pollard. His overacting constantly
upstaged his puppets, his puppeteering was poor, and for a lot of the night he
sang flat. Given that he had the lead
roles this was a real problem.
Overall the singing was great though. The cast is young and most of the women still
need to develop strength in their mid-upper range, but that will come with time
and dedication.
Lim was a real standout in performance. You could never look away from her, even when
she was just popping her head out of the window, and she has wonderful comic
timing.
The character of Gary Coleman, played by
Khan, is an interesting plot device. Coleman is portrayed as an adult, forced
to accept a job as a building superintendent in the run-down Avenue Q neighbourhood
due to his dire financial situation. The show's creators have explained this
trope as an illustration of ‘one of the most important themes in Avenue
Q...that life isn't as easy as we've been led to believe...and who better to
symbolize the oh-so-special-as-a-kid/but-not-so-special-as-an-adult thing we
all faced than Gary Coleman? He's practically the poster child." This whole show is about how ordinary we all
are, and that this is okay so the device works.
Khan does a good job generally, but in the final scene she portrays him
as a dope smoking, cocaine sniffing layabout, however none of this is ever hinted
at earlier in the production. The show
and the character would be stronger and funnier if she played this into the
character right from the start I think.
Avenue Q is a tried and true funny musical
and ranks as the 23rd longest running musicals on Broadway. It is a lot of fun with enough technical
requirements to really set it out from the crowd. There are rod puppets and hand puppets and
the show does not confine actors to a single puppet so the changeovers are
fascinating as well as the story.
Bovaird does a magnificent job to enliven
what is quite a small space and give it movement and dynamics. The ‘Loud as the Hell You Want’ scene is
magnificent, and Bovaird’s design for Princeton’s commitment phobic moment
really does make that scene everything it is.
For a complete evening of fun and a whole lot
of impropriety, sex (yes, there is graphic live puppet sex), and moral
transgressions go and see this show.
Within all of this so-called depravity lies some really big questions of
inclusion and tolerance and basic humanity.
4.5 stars
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