MUSICAL THEATRE
THEATRE REVIEW: Musical Avenue Q is smart and magical
South Africans love musical theatre but many local productions are familiar and repetitive. So Avenue Q is like a sneaky fresh breeze and cool as a cucumber. The musical play of puppets steered by a sassy group of actors turns on a dime as the story unfolds. It is delivered with a youthful exuberance stamped into every slinky move and musical note warbled as they reveal a story as cynical as they come. And yet, at its heart, it’s marshmallow soft. The sex and the talk (about sex, race and gender mostly, but also about finding a purpose) becomes more raucous and slurpy as the puppets find their inner souls. It’s a show that demands from audiences that they engage from the start and, after they take that leap, it’s rewarding on many levels. It is original and current because of its themes and also the way it is presented. The way the puppets look and perform with the help of the human cast turns every performance into much more than just song-and-dance routines.
Although they ma...
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