Miners Alley production is a boatload of laughs with an all-star cast
It’s been 20 years since Avenue Q premiered Off-Broadway and went on to win a 2004 Tony for Best Musical, but the show still comes off surprisingly fresh — with only a few hints to its pre-iPhone origins and chock-full of in-your-face social commentary that would seem almost impossible to replicate today.
And while it may well seem the kind of production best suited for a large house (its regional premiere in Colorado in 2008 was at the Buell), the team at Miners Alley Playhouse in Golden proves once again that small can be mighty. While the show was originally meant to be performed at the theatre’s new, larger space set to open later this year, director Warren Sherrill makes the most of the current stage with a simple but functional set and a small but highly effective live band.
Avenue Q at its core is an adult-themed version of Sesame Street, with puppets, a tight-knit community of off-the-wall characters and a variety of hot-topic issues to deal with. But instead of ABC’s and 123’s, the topics are sex, race, money, relationships, gender identity — all the weighty topics to be confronted by the mostly 20- or 30-something characters. Unapologetically crude in places and not shy about speaking the quiet parts aloud, Avenue Q is a wickedly funny exploration of adulting with a lot of heart.
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When Princeton (David Otto) shows up at Avenue Q looking for a cheap place to rent, he almost instantly becomes part of the community. This includes, somewhat inexplicably, the grown-up Gary Coleman (a terrific Keandra Hunt); unlucky-in-love Kate Monster (Ava Francis); bad roommate and green monster Nicky (Mike Martinkus); an awkward Asian named Christmas Eve (Emily Gerhard) and her fiancé/husband and serially unemployed doofus Brian (Carter Edward Smith).
Together, the cast portrays three humans and 11 puppet characters (only Hunt, Gerhard and Smith don’t handle puppets). We’re treated to decidedly non-traditional musical numbers such as “It Sucks to Be Me,” “I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today,” “I Wish I Could Go Back to College” and a few chair squirmers like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” “The Internet Is for Porn” and “The More You Ruv Someone.”
It’s all a ton of fun, even as the characters wrestle with some real problems. By employing puppets, the cast is easily expanded, and the non-human avatars can do things human actors couldn’t — like have wild, noisy sex.
Driving it all is a tremendous cast led by Otto and Francis as the on-again, off-again couple trying to find their own paths. I really enjoyed Francis’s portrayal of Kate Monster, her powerful voice finding all the touchpoints of her wounded character while she also deploys it to portray Lucy the Slut — a brassy man-stealer with the morals of an alley cat. Otto also does a really nice job as the pathetic new grad still dependent on his parents’ largesse, but he plays the closeted homosexual Rod in love with Nicky with equal passion and switches back and forth between the two with ease.
Another huge contribution comes from Martinkus, who plays Rod’s unfortunately-not-gay roommate Nicky as well as Trekkie — a porn-obsessed monster who’s sort of a mashup between Oscar the Grouch and Animal. A gifted voice actor, Martinkus has the low growl of Oscar down pat, but he also successfully channels Ernie as the hapless man-child Nicky. He’s often accompanied by a non-speaking Corey Exline as co-puppeteer, who’s a lot of fun to watch in this part as well as that of Kate Monster’s “cranky old bitch” boss. But she really shines as one of the “Bad Idea Bears” — who along with Martinkus portray a pair of cute teddy bears who appear at inopportune moments to suggest things like chugging Long Island iced teas the night before a big day or produce a noose as another way out of a problem.
The husband-wife duo of Christmas Eve and Brian affords plenty of opportunity for two skilled comic actors to realize this odd pair. Gerhard is clearly having a lot of fun playing the tongue-twisted Asian stereotype while Smith floats through scenes with childlike innocence as Christmas Eve browbeats him to get a job.
The production also features a tight band that’s center-stage between two risers. Powered by Trent Hines and Donna Kolpan Debreceni on dual keyboards, Lynn Keller on bass and Steve Wright on the drum kit — with music direction by Susan Draus — the band successfully reproduces a score that would typically have twice the number of musicians.
All told, this production of Avenue Q is a strong way to finish out the summer up in Golden — but don’t wait: word is these shows are selling out fast.
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