by RICK DANLEY // March 22, 2019
It must be the case that among the many performing arts events staged each year in Iola, nine out of ten are family-friendly. And that’s nice…if, you know, family-friendly is your thing.
The Iola Community Theatre, on the other hand — in its expert staging of “Avenue Q,” the long-running Broadway puppet musical that rides the line between the profound and the profane with hilarious finesse — recognizes that adults can’t subsist on pap alone, and that an uncomfortable truth expressed in the form of a dirty joke is sometimes the best catharsis. And when it comes to “Avenue Q,” this musical has catharsis coming out the waz.
Staged as a “Sesame Street”-style musical, “Avenue Q” tells the story of Princeton (played by an excellent Dave Glauner), an idealistic young college grad who lands in New York full of dreams of becoming; his imagination suffused with the certainty that the perfect life is just around the corner — a great career! an ideal love! happiness! meaning! purpose! But it isn’t long before Princeton’s optimism is roughly dashed against the sharp rocks of adult disappointment and our buoyant protagonist finds himself front stage, belting out grimly comic carols like “I Wish I Could Go Back to College” or “What Do You Do With a B.A. in English.”
Princeton’s only consolation, if it even is that, is that he’s fallen in with a group of similarly overeducated, underperforming neighbors who have it as bad, if not worse, than he does.
And while “Avenue Q” clearly isn’t a puppet show for kids, neither is it a musical for the average pearl clutcher in your life. The show’s sophisticated, off-color wit will likely remain invisible to anyone whose sensitivities are easily disheveled by the play’s course surface.
Instead, “Avenue Q” is for people who don’t mind — or even enjoy — seeing two puppets simulate sex while TV’s Gary Coleman (Bryan Johnson) sings a song called “You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Making Love).” It’s for those who won’t blanch when an Oscar the Grouch-inspired monster (Paul Vernon) sings about his hardcore porn addiction. Oh, and there’s a tedious kindergarten teacher with the pudendal name of Mrs. Thistletwat (Ranie Wahlmeier) and a promiscuous cabaret singer named Lucy the Slut (also Wahlmeier). Tim Everson, one of the few humans in the show without his hand up a puppet, plays Brian, a failed stand-up comedian engaged to an overbearing Japanese woman named Christmas Eve, played with an enormously broad accent by Alison Fees, who also directs the two-hour play. At one point in the show, Everson serenades the audience with a very moving rendition of “I’m Not Wearing Underwear Today.” And you believe him.
Not to be outdone, his betrothed, Christmas Eve, sings her best version of “The More You Ruv Someone.” And in case you’re wondering whether “Avenue Q” knows that it’s trading in Orientalist stereotypes, it does. The show even includes a perky song about this very brand of casual racism, called, well, “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.”
Perhaps the only morally unblemished character in the musical is Kate the Monster (Kate Terhune), a kindergarten teaching assistant and Princeton’s main love interest — when he isn’t lusting after the amply bosomed Lucy, that is.
Princeton’s emotional crisis is internal. It’s the anguish of feeling deep down that you’re meant for something great but not knowing exactly what it is. His is the silent scream of the flounderer. “What is my purpose?” Princeton asks again and again throughout the show.
But Princeton has real-world nemeses, too. For starters, there are two extremely cute, demented, Care Bear-like creatures (Ben and Sofie Alexander), who exercise an adorable malice over Princeton’s life, appearing during his various moments of self-doubt. The Bad Idea Bears, with their squeaky cartoon voices and id-oriented influence, encourage the vulnerable Princeton to drink more, to sleep with strangers, and, finally, to kill himself (spoiler alert: he doesn’t).
While “Avenue Q” plumbs dark themes, the show itself is flooded with raucous joy. It ranks — like certain great works of satirical literature, think Rabelais or Chaucer, or TV shows like “The Simpsons” or “South Park” — among that species of beautiful filth, which, by touching on forbidden biases or desires, makes you laugh even when you shouldn’t.
Finally, there is a subplot in “Avenue Q” that concerns a pair of Ernie and Bert-based roommates (Steven Henderson and Paul Borcherding), in which one of the puppets, Rod (Borcherding), a closeted gay Republican investment banker, remains unable or unwilling to acknowledge his sexuality, and spends untold energy across the length of the musical trying to convince everyone around him that he isn’t gay, a project that culminates in an extraordinarily camp invocation of a song called “My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada.”
You should see the show just for that.
RG danley 