THEATRE NOTES Avenue Q is a Smash at San Jose Stage Co.
And Other Notes of June and for July Theatre Commentary by Paul Myrvold
Avenue Q SAN JOSE STAGE COMPANY T
o waste no time, let’s get it out there. San Jose Stage Company’s Avenue Q is a smash, a complete triumph and one of the most fun-filled, riotously outrageous evenings (or afternoons) that can be had in the Bay Area. And yes, it is mildly blue with a few four-letter words and some random naughtiness. Children of tender years will have questions. Think Muppets gone wild! A hilarious puppet sex scene tours the Kama Sutra but without visible carnality – nothing
below the waist but a puppeteer’s arm. Real human characters interact with puppet characters, but puppets only fall in love with each other, so no gross-out sex there.
The setting of Avenue Q is a poor fan- tasy Manhattan neighborhood some- where to the east of Alphabet City where failures moan “It Sucks to Be Me.” A college boy, Princeton (given abundant life by the astonishingly ener- getic puppeteer David Colston Corris), set adrift by graduation (“What Do You Do with a B.A. in English”), rents a tenement apartment managed by former child star Gary Coleman (the shape shifting chanteuse Cheryl B. Scales). There he meets a human couple – Brian (the effervescent Martin Rojas-Dietrich), a failed come- dian, and his fiancée, a Japanese immi- grant named Christmas Eve (stunning
40 July 2011 • Out & About
Rinabeth Apostal who shreds the Asian stereotype by taking it to the absurd extreme).
Brian also meets and falls for Kate Monster (fetchingly animated by pup- peteer Halsey Varady), a furry female
through which the puppeteer artist projects his or her will, but unlike the ventriloquist who goes to great extremes to conceal that he is the voice of his dummy, these puppeteers make no such effort. And because he or she is removed behind or beside the character, the puppet, like the dummy, can say and do things the puppeteer cannot. So touchy subjects such as racism (“Every One’s a Little Racist”) or the shameful joy of others’ misfortune
(“Schadenfreude”) can be fearlessly confronted.
The songs and dialogue by Robert
HALSEY VARADY AS KATEMONSTER ANDMONIQUE HAFEN AND ROBERT BREWER AS TREKKIEMONSTER IN “AVENUE Q” AT SAN JOSE STAGE COMPANY.
PHOTO: DAVE LEPORI.
who dreams of starting a school for monster children. Rounding out the denizens of Avenue Q are Nicky (the masterful Robert Brewer who seam- lessly animates three other characters) and his roommate Rod (Mr. Corris), an odd couple not unlike Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, as well as Lucy, the Slut (Monique Hafen, a fine, torchy singer and a gifted voice actor) and finally Trekkie Monster (Mr. Brewer in gruff voice á la Cookie Monster) who has only one thing on his mind as revealed in the song “The Internet is for Porn.”
The puppeteers for the most part subsume themselves in their characters. The wandering audience eye finds the human expression, whether facial or physical, not a mirror of the puppet character but the powerful emotional source of it. The puppet is the avatar
Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty are wickedly witty and screamingly funny. The music is fine, original and played superbly by the invisible band under the direction of Spencer Williams. Dottie Lester’s choreography fits the action as surely as a puppeteer’s hand. The sound design by Grant Huberty is terrific as is the Street Scene-like set, which is transparently lit by Selina G Young. Under the direction of Rick Singleton, the show is a nuanced, quick paced wonder.
As giddily entertaining as Avenue Q is, it tackles big issues of the human condi- tion in a way that is touchingly thought provoking. It ranks with the best of true musical comedies.
Extended though July 17 at The Stage in Downtown San Jose.
Little Shop of Horrors THE WESTERN STAGE
T
he Western Stage production of Little Shop of Horrors is a grin, a giggle and a guffaw from begin- ning to end, but this production’s most telling quality is its heart. The cast,
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