Puppet play clearly has its felt fingers on the pulse of a generation

DYLAN HEWLETT PHOTO Enlarge Image

Manfredi (from left), Balzer, Pridham, Forbes and Sy star in loud, raunchy musical Avenue Q.

Sesame Street's Cookie Monster, Big Bird and The Count were created to teach kids what they needed to get them ready for preschool.

Avenue Q --which got its long awaited local debut Thursday night at the sold-out Gas Station Arts Centre -- has its own felt friends named Kate Monster, Christmas Eve and Lucy the Slut dispensing lessons for post-school, teaching college grads the things they need to get ready for the rest of their lives.

That semi-serious objective is buried under a raucous evening of theatre unlike anything seen before on a Winnipeg stage. It's a loud, raunchy and funny musical that uses four-letter words, catchy, jingle-like homages to the instructional ditties of children's educational TV and the kind of puppet-on-puppet sex that would make libertine string-puller Ronnie Burkett blush.

What was even more impressive is how Avenue Q filled the Osborne Village venue with young adults in numbers rare for Winnipeg theatre, which is typically dominated by greying boomers. The Robert Lopez/Jeff Marx (Jeff Whitty wrote the book) coming-of-age cult hit clearly has its felt fingers on the pulse of a generation, putting a reality bites spin on an American dream that has failed them.

It opens on a rundown stretch of Avenue Q with the sunny Sesame Street-ish song, "it's a lovely day, a perfect morning for a kid to play" but residents we are about to meet have "lots of bills to pay." That especially is the case with Princeton (played by Aaron Pridham), a 22-year-old optimistically seeking his place in the world. It doesn't take long before he ruefully is questioning his readiness with What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?

His neighbours, singleton teaching assistant Kate Monster (Paige Pooley), closeted roommates Nicky (Joshua Balzer) and Rod (Nyk Bielak), unemployed doofus Brian (Scott Forbes) and his Japanese girlfriend Christmas Eve (Stephanie Sy) and building superintendent Gary Coleman (Connie Manfredi), yes that Gary Coleman, the former child star of the TV show Different Strokes, all join Princeton in one of the big heartfelt ensemble numbers, It Sucks to Be Me.

There are other equally infectious, celebratory songs like Everyone's a Little Bit Racist and The Internet is For Porn interspersed with lessons, shown on an onstage screen, about commitment, one-night stands and schadenfreude.

Some of the characters are puppets brought to life on the arms of actors who sing and dance in full view. Others like Brian, Christmas Eve and Gary Coleman are played by actors who interact with the puppets. The brightly coloured hand puppets, rented from a Philadelphia company by the newly formed District Theatre Collective, often reflect the looks of their animators, mostly noticeable with the long blond hair-flipping Lucy and the sashaying Jackie Kurceba.

The relatively young cast, directed by Manfredi, gets all the humour and plenty of the profound sadness its characters live with over economic promises broken. Some of the singers are better than others, as is the puppeteering, but nothing detracts from the pleasure of the two-hour production (plus a 15 minute intermission). The lighting was noticeably uneven while the six-member band led by conductor Paul DeGurse was unseen but not unappreciated.

Pridham exhibited an Everyman/slacker quality that was charming while Pooley has the voice and adorable stage presence that effortlessly draws from the audience empathy for Kate Monster. Sy showed splendid comic timing, earning loads of laughs as the token ethnic. The show's true scene-stealers were the Bad Idea Bear puppets (baby-talking Kurceba and Colin Peterson), who are like I-don't-care bears urging excessive drinking and hanging as a career option.

Kudos to District Theatre Collective for finally staging Avenue Q in a manner far beyond the expectations of an official amateur production. An unknown local theatre company currently holds the professional rights so another run may be in the works.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 4, 2012 G8