avenue q rocks

Avenue Q is fantastic!

Also, in other news, a puppet stole my iPhone... okay, he technically stole Ma's handbag, which she'd put my iPhone in... and then couldn't get into it because it's much to complicated a handbag even when you don't have arms made of fabric... and then he THREW it back to her...

But that's when happens when you sit front row, centre...

Before I get ahead of myself, we headed down to Her Majesty's a little early just to escape the heat, and managed to score a free car park... free, in the middle of the city... woohoo... granted it wasn't undercover and was kinda in the sun, but still.

Fortunately the theatre was nice and cool... and it didn't seem to long before they were letting us in. The seats turned out to be pretty good, location-wise... okay, so they were maybe a LITTLE too close as far as the viewing angle, but I could stretch out my legs and we could see just about every little facial expression on each of the performers. Sadly the physical seats themselves, kinda crap and not that comfortable, which was a shame.

When they raised the curtain before the show started, I was just entranced by the set... it's very reminiscent of Sesame Street, that faux brownstone look... but there were little details that I just loved, lamps in windows, teevee aerials, that kinda thing.

But how would you feel if you got to the theatre nice and early, got your seats right up the front only to have a group of people come in and claim that you were sitting in a couple of their seats... then discover that you had tickets for the matinee that afternoon! Not us fortunately, but it happened to a couple just down the row from us!

As the show actually started it was initially a little disorienting... do I look at the guy, do I look at the puppet, do I look at the guy AND the puppet.... but then, it's not like I haven't experienced that before, so after an initial moment I settled in to watching both as much as possible. Interestingly though, some of the characters I found myself more focused on the puppet... more often than not though, I think it was Kate Monster... which I think speaks volumes for the skill of Natalie Alexopoulos since she just made that little furry creature come alive.

The whole cast was fantastic though... but I have to give big snaps not only to Natalie but also to Luke Joslin as both Nicky and Trekkie Monster, who pretty much stole every single scene he was in, not only with Trekkie's performance, but also his own facial expressions. Special mention and additional snaps also have to go to Josie Lane who performs one arm of both Nicky and Trekkie and manages to keep pace with Luke perfectly.

But like I said, everybody was excellent, people and puppets alike.

The songs are fantastic too... my personal favourites have to be "The Internet Is For Porn" (a Trekkie Monster number), "You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want (When You're Makin Love)" (hello, puppet sex!), "The More You Ruv Someone" (a brilliant performance by Christina O'Neill) and "The Money Song".... but that last one I loved mostly because that's when they came offstage and Princeton (with the help of the very talented Mitchell Butel) stole Ma's handbag.

My only real complaint, and I'm not sure if that was because we were right at the front, as that I couldn't always hear the words of the songs over the music, but overall that's a very small complaint in an otherwise awesome show.

Definitely one that I would recommend, and something I would very much like to see again if it ever comes back to town.

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