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AVENUE Q:
A CHAT WITH CO-CREATOR ROBERT LOPEZ
Now playing in an open-ended run
Blog posted October 24, 2009

“A puppet can render opinions on people and things that a human commentator would not feel free to utter.”
– Walter Cronkite, A Reporter’s Life

The unorthodox history of Avenue Q, the little musical that could, continues. From its initial success Off-Broadway, to its Broadway transfer (including its surprise “Best Musical” Tony win against the Wicked juggernaut), to eschewing a national tour in favor of an exclusive sit-down engagement in Las Vegas, the sweetly satirical puppet musical Avenue Q has never played by the book. Its latest eyebrow-raising move is, after six successful years on the main stem, bringing the show a few blocks northwest, where it’s now cozily ensconsed Off-Broadway at New World Stages alongside other quirky musicals like Altar Boyz and The Toxic Avenger.
It’s easy to take the show for granted, but for co-creator Robert Lopez, Avenue Q has been an odyssey ten years in the making. In 1999 he met Jeff Marx in the BMI Musical Theatre Writing workshop, and the two began working on Kermit, Prince of Denmark, a muppet movie on spec, loosely based on Hamlet (featuring Gonzo and Fozzie Bear as Rosencratz and Guildenstern). Though their efforts won the team the 2000 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics, the Jim Henson Company passed on the project.

Undaunted, Lopez and Marx “had so much fun doing Kermit, we decided to make our own puppet universe. We came upon the idea of creating an educational show for grown-ups and the songs just burst forth and flew out.” Knowing they wanted to reach as many people as possible Lopez and Marx rented a theatre space to present a “pilot episode” of the project to potential producers of television and theatre – only theatre people showed up, including Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCullom (producers of the similarly youth-oriented musical Rent) and Robyn Goodman. Under their guidance, the show’s focus shifted and became “more than a ‘Sesame Street’ parody – we had to go deeper than Ernie and Bert”

Many, many drafts later, countless gags and occupations for the lead characters (wanna-be comedian Brian once wore a chicken suit á la Big Bird, and the Japanese character Christmas Eve’s occupation wavered between being a conceptional artist to a Korean deli worker to being a therapist with no clients), the show finally took shape and premiered Off-Broadway as a co-production between the New Group and the Vineyard Theatre, financially sweetened by Seller, McCullom and Goodman. En route to Broadway, Lopez says that the show tightened up, and even after its Tony win and international success, the creators continued to tinker – some small changes made during the runs in Vegas and London (“Cameron Mackintosh -- the London production’s producer -- has a great feel for underscoring” Lopez says) were incorporated into the New York version of the show.

The show has also been produced all over the world, with productions in different countries adding their own twists, particularly with the character of Gary Coleman, the child star of TV’s “Diff’rent Strokes” who now is the superintendent on Avenue Q. “I haven’t seen all the versions,” Lopez says, “but apparently in Finland, the role is done in blackface – a convention that’s accepted there – and the character is called ‘Michael Jackson’ in Italy.”

Jeff Marx (left) and Robert Lopez celebrate their 2004 Tony win for "Best Score" for Avenue Q.

So what can Off-Broadway audiences expect from the show? Well, the New World Stages run features the same set as the Broadway production (sans the show curtain), as well as the same puppets, the same orchestrations, and all cast members have appeared in other productions of Avenue Q – in fact, Anika Larson (Kate Monster/Lucy the Slut), Nicholas Kohn (Brian), and Danielle K. Thomas (Gary Coleman) from the final Broadway company are continuing with the show.

“Also, the intimacy of the show has returned, as well a sense of realism I didn’t realize it had lost,” says Lopez. “The tour (which began in 2007 after the Las Vegas production folded) played these 2000 – 3000 seat barns, and by necessity the acting had gotten much bigger. Off-Broadway, you get the sense that the puppets are right there in your lap. Additionally, on Broadway, the balcony went much further back, and the new space doesn’t echo so much.” (The Golden Theatre, where it played on Broadway, has 800 seats, and New World Stages has 499.)

Since Avenue Q, Lopez has kept busy – with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez he has written a musical based on the film Finding Nemo which plays six times daily at Disney World, and the couple will also soon write a film musical for Disney, in addition to Up Here, as a new musical romance commissioned by Roundabout Theatre Company. Lopez and Marx were partially inspired to create Avenue Q after seeing South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, and Lopez is now working with the "South Park" creators on a Mormon musical. “Getting to work with (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) is a dream come true.”

Speaking of dreams, there will always be bright young kids who come to New York armed with dreams and a B.A. in English, all hoping to find their purpose. Learning that everyone’s a little bit racist and that the more you love someone, the more you want to kill them. Discovering that there’s a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time, meanwhile wishing that they could go back to college. And finding the truth that everything in life, from hair to sex to Fox News is only for now. As A Chorus Line put it, the sweetness and the sorrow. And just as that Tony-winning Off-Broadway transfer defined its generation, so does Avenue Qcrystallize our own. Long may it run! 


Rod (with Seth Rettberg), Nicky (with Maggie Lakis and Cullen R. Titmas.   Photo by Carol Rosegg.

At the 499-seat theatre at New World Stages, Avenue Q will perform Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm and 8pm, and Sundays at 3pm and 7:30pm. Tickets range in price from $86.50 to $66.50 and are available by calling Telecharge.com at 212-239-6200. A limited number of rush tickets for $26.50 are available at the box office for each performance.