It's rowdy and raucous, sexy and sophisticated. It promotes love, both free and C.O.D., and it tries to add at least one new word to the audience's vocabulary. It's imaginative and high-powered, preaches that kindness and tolerance are superior to hate, blends puppets, who look a little like Muppets but whose language and actions would never make it on TV, with some fine young actors learning the rigorous world of a bus-and-truck tour.
That's "Avenue Q," a splendid musical that opened at the Fox Theatre last night to run through the weekend. Named for a street in Brooklyn, it features a charming, delightful young woman, Jacqueline Grabois, who misses being named for a major local street by a single letter (clue: the correct and incorrect letters are side by side on a keyboard). She's the puppet handler and voice of Kate Monster, our sweet heroine, and of Lucy The Slut, our salty non-heroine. She handles (both literally and figuratively) several other characters, too. Four of the actors are both puppeteers, actors and singers; the other three simply sing and act.
It opened off-Broadway in 2003, earned a promotion to Broadway in only a few months, then scored three Tony Awards (Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book) out of six nominations.
With book by Jeff Whitty, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, the show's success lies in its ability to deal with serious subjects in a very non-serious manner. We have an unemployed college graduate who is realizing just how useless a B.A. in English can be; a reclusive porn addict, a young woman who is a kindergarten teaching assistant; a gay Republican investment banker who won't come out of the closet; a 32-year-old man who still is an aspiring comedian; his live-in girl friend, a Japanese therapist with only one client. All standard types, but written by Whitty with real style and considerable class, and with a stroke of genius he adds a character named Gary Coleman, once a national television star but, as he puts it, "washed up at the age of 15," and now is the "super" (New York verbal shorthand for an apartment house janitor and handy-man, known more formally as the superintendent), brilliantly played, with superb timing, by Nigel Jamaal Clark.
Lopez and Marx deal with the usual issues of racism, unemployment, seduction, out-of-towners facing New York realism, finding apartments, all the topics that have fascinated writers into creating "My Sister Eileen," "The Out-of-Towners," "Barefoot in the Park" and dozens of others, but their score, including "It Sucks to Be Me," "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" and "The Internet is for Porn," among others, indicates that we're more alike than we are different, if we would only recognize it–and admit it–in ourselves.
The use of a handful of video effects, with animated figures and letters, works nicely, with director Jason Moore carefully keeping them infrequent so they remain a pleasure, but they're at their best in a song called "Schadenfreude," a German word meaning to take pleasure from the misfortunes of another, especially if there's someone in your life whose misfortunes you especially enjoy.
Grabois is terrific, as is Lisa Helmi Johanson, cast as Christmas Eve, the gorgeous Japanese therapist, who actually is half Finnish and half Korean. Both women, however, were harsh and almost unpleasant in their upper registers, but that might have been due to the Fox's sound system or troubles in the work of the sound engineer. Michael Liscio Jr., stood out as Nicky and Trekkie Monster, and so did Brent Michael DiRoma, working as Princeton, the lonely English major, and Rod, the gay Republican. Kerri Bracken glowed as the other puppeteer-singer, while Tim Kornblum was properly hapless as the hopeless comic. Tech work stood out, too, with fine costumes from Mirena Rada and a delightful set by Anna Louizos.
"Avenue Q," opened Friday at the Fox Theatre, will run through Sunday
-Joe