Speaking of the Tony’s, Let’s Talk Avenue Q
Avenue Q (winner of the 2004 Tony for Best Musical) has been making the rounds of my friends of late. I confess to being kind of surprised that it took them so long; my friends, even the ones not from NYC, tend to be pretty aware of current issues and trends, and the Sesame Street parody for Generation X is all about that.
More Than GenX
I got introduced to it by my daughter, believe it or not, who is as big a Renthead as you can get. The producers of Rent, along with composers/lyricists Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, put together a series of songs such as “The Internet is for Porn” and “Everybody’s a Little Bit Racist,” and then got Jeff Whitty to write the book.
He created characters that my generation easily identified with – like “Trekkie Monster.” “”The joke of the show is, this is a primer for those years — like ‘Sesame Street’ is a primer for your childhood,” he said.
The Impermanent Generation
Heidi Miller, a friend of mine who recently saw it, agrees. “It is the sung representation of absolutely everything that Gen X’ers believe and have been through…The characteristics of Gen X’ers include a disbelief in stability…They have no believe in permanence. If you ask them for their 10-year plan, they will stare at you blankly.”
All conveyed, believe it or not, through hand puppets, manipulated by actors who have been through “puppet school,” and have to become a sort of quadruple threat: singing, dancing, acting, and puppeteering. But for a generation raised on Sesame Street, this serves as a sneaky back door into the subconscious of our minds. As Heidi notes, the puppets “come together, tear apart, find jobs, lose jobs, lose homes, find love and find purpose…” A better definition of theatre could not be made.
The tour may be coming to a city near you; it’s certainly worth the money. And Mr. Whitty is not sitting on his laurels – he’s hard at work adapting Armistad Maupin’s Tales of the City into a musical, with Jake Shears and John Garden, of the Scissor Sisters, composing. “I just feel if they could turn Les Miserables into a musical, we can do it with ‘Tales of the City.’ ”
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In truth, I was amazed at how the actors used movement and expression to enhance the puppet’s performances without detracting from them. I’m still not sure how they did that!