When it comes to pure, delicious and nutritious charm, it doesn’t get much better than "Avenue Q." An inventive and joyous musical with an abundance of wit, the national tour, running at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre through Feb. 27th, dazzled an opening night audience more than ready to shower the cast with love and energy at every turn.
The story of "Avenue Q" follows the new and ideal college grad Princeton (David Colston Corris), as he gets ready to tackle the world and find his “purpose.” While settling on Avenue Q because it was much cheaper than Avenue A, B and so on, he meets and befriends out of work comedian Brian (Tim Kornblum), his therapist wife Christmas Eve (Lisa Helmi Johanson), the Super of Avenue Q Gary Coleman (Anita Welch), longtime roommates Rod (Corris) and Nicky (Michael Liscio, Jr.) and of course, the object of his furry desires, the lovely, ideal teacher’s aide Kate Monster (Ashley Eileen Bucknam).
Princeton is so full of virtue, and enters a sweet relationship with Kate, takes it a step further with a studly mixtape, and ends sealing the deal with some of the hottest puppet love in Broadway history.
And even though the relationship seems to be going along swimmingly well, major cold feet into the seriousness of where the relationship is going causes Princeton to put on the brakes, creating major heartache for the adorable monster.
But no commitment issues are needed to move forward with a little one-night-stand action with cabaret singer Lucy the Slut (Bucknam)
Other subplots include Rod’s secret love for Nicky, the Bad Idea Bears constantly trying to live up to their name, and Christmas Eve’s quest to gain and maintain a regular client.
The brilliance of this show, which I saw on Broadway in 2009, is that it is so refreshingly honest, but through humor, extremely disarming. It is also just straight up raunchy, but with tact. With songs like “If You Were Gay,” Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” and “I Wish I Could Go Back to College,” the score shows not only a commitment to humor, but a heavy dose of poignancy.
The cast in this show is forever charming and uber-talented. The character of Kate Monster is brilliantly maneuvered by Bucknam, especially in scenes with Lucy, where she voices both characters, not necessarily with a wild commitment to complete distinguishability, but more importantly to manipulate the voice to make each character come alive.
The show itself also has plenty of something that any great show needs – heart. It has its tongue firmly rooted in its cheek, and not only creates plenty of laughs, but just enough sadness and truth to hit the audience where they live. In no other place was this most effective as the moment where Rod discovers that he was talking in his sleep (an absolutely real, heartbreaking moment). Rod and Nicky is such a wonderful subplot with honest highs and lows, and a joyous denoument that had the audience cheering.
Other hit songs include “What do you do with a BA in English,” an ode to the recent college graduate who looks back on the four year of higher education only to simply ask “What the hell was that?” Throw in a wildly hilarious look at the true value of the World Wide Web in “The Internet is for Porn,” and of course, one of the great life lessons in the song “You Can be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Making Love).
Avenue Q is going on year seven as the direct impression of Sesame Street, written by Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez, who began working on the show in the late ‘90’s and won the 2004 Tony Award. It still remains such a fresh and alive piece, one that is still so up to date, only making one noticeable reference change. Throw in a unit set that has a wonderfully animated quality, and yet is so versatile, along with two plasma monitors that filled in some hilarious sight gags (although they were a bit small in the Orpheum space), and the tight group of seven cast members nailed home the show’s wonderfulness.
Early on in the show, the residents of Avenue Q engage in a pretty intense contest, trying to prove whose life sucks more. And even while they constantly tell each other, “It Sucks to be Me,” the audience got to sing a much different tune that most certainly featured the lyrics “It Didn’t Suck to be Us.”
EXAMINE IT FOR YOURSELF
Shorenstein Hayes Nederlander of San Francisco presents “Avenue Q”
Music and Lyrics by Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez
Book by Jeff Whitty
Through Feb. 27th
Tickets range from $30 - $99
The Orpheum Theatre
1192 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102
For tickets, call the box office @ (888) SHN-1799 or visit the official website.
David is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Email him at dchavez04@att.net
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