We Live on Avenue Q

Avenue Q

           The story of the origin of The Book of Mormon is nearly as compelling as the musical’s own plot. In 2004, when Trey Parker and Matt Stone were deep into work for their puppet film, Team America: World Police, they visited Broadway to wind down, choosing to see, perhaps in empathy, the puppet musical Avenue Q. Replacing the perpetual joy and spirit of learning on Sesame Street with songs such as “If You Were Gay,” “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” and “You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want When You’re Making Love,” the musical, presumably also an attraction to Parker and Stone for its vulgarity, was written by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx. (Later that year Avenue Q won the Tony for Best Musical.) Lopez, as he later confided in interviews, was inspired by the film musical: “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut” to create Avenue Q, and was greatly surprised to see its creators in his audience. After the show, the three went out for a drink, and discovered that each had been thinking of doing a parody of the Mormons on a much larger scale than a 30-minute episode. And thus, The Book was born.

           It has been seven years since Avenue Q opened on Broadway, and my parents went to see the show that same year. As The Book of Mormon inspired me to begin watching South Park, I allowed it to draw me in a different direction - following the musical’s composer, Robert Lopez, to the New World Stages on 50th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues, a block away from “The Book.” The theater, which once acted as a film multiplex, now hosts seven shows (the newest, a revival of Rent, premiering in July) and a remarkable ethic of keeping the shows high-quality and a credit to their Broadway predecessors. Avenue Q, which will play indefinitely (another credit to the Stages), is no exception. However, it needs to be no better than it was on a smaller stage, and would be fantastic anywhere.

           My thirst for Broadway greatness in the style of The Book of Mormon did not go unquenched. Avenue Q is raunchy, no doubt, but spectacularly written with music to boot. The best thing about this show (discounting perhaps a few of the better-performed numbers) is its anti-Sesame Street spirit. Throughout, it maintains that life isn’t perfect, as evidenced by its opening number, “It Sucks to Be Me” and shouldn’t be treated as such.

           Avenue Q itself is a great representation of how unfair life is. The nonexistent New York street is portrayed as three small apartment buildings inhabited by a wide array of characters. In the first, lives unemployed aspiring comedian Brian and his Asian-American therapist wife, Christmas Eve, and a neurotic, goody two-shoes schoolteacher, Kate Monster (monster being a new, furry ethnicity created to further poke fun at Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster and his ilk). In the second, lives a closeted gay Republican stock-broker (who insists he’s straight in the slapstick tune “My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada”), Rod, and his straight, green-skinned roommate, Nicky (a blatant lampoon of Bert and Ernie).

           In the third, lives the shaggy, porn-addicted pervert Trekkie Monster (a twisted orange Cookie Monster), the new kid in town, Princeton, struggling to find his “purpose,” and the building’s super, Gary Coleman (whose first entrance is accompanied by the strains of the Diff'rent Strokes theme), who in Avenue Q’s world is apparently still living. Their struggles to interact with each other without causing offense or hurt is a clear example of how tough life is, and how if you don’t deal with it you’ll be stuck living in either a false reality or the past forever (a fact accepted by Princeton, Nicky, and Kate in “I Wish I Could Go Back to College”).

           Avenue Q is enacted expertly - not just sung or acted, but also with the help of its puppeteers. The puppets interact with the human actors similarly to its infamous similar show on PBS, and the players controlling them remain unnoticed in black, tight clothing, and, after a while, unnoticeable even to the audience. The fact that “Q” remains so great after almost a decade, while being staged with different actors, on 50th, stands as a tribute to its excellence in every area of the arts. The show knows how to use its fame - it closed only two years ago after having made $117 million, donates all funds collected during the showstopper “The Money Song” to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and has played in 17 countries. It’s going to Germany, #18, in 2012. Let’s just say that after my little experience, I can conclusively say that Robert Lopez is a musical genius. Good luck to Avenue Q wherever it may roam.