‘Makes you forget the lack of legs’
Life is hard, disappointing and grinding, but unbridled puppet-based silliness might be the answer. Will overworked NHS doctors start prescribing Avenue Q tickets instead of forest bathing?
Historically, it makes perfect sense for the 20th (UK) anniversary of the Robert Lopez (music & lyrics), Jeff Marx (music & lyrics), and Jeff Whitty’s (book) concept to land again (leglessly, of course) at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Named in the early 1900s as “The Laughter House Where You Can Forget the War”, and in the 80s home to Ray Cooney’s troupe of comedians, along with many more theatrical hijinks. The last independent West End theatre has gone through a revamp, bringing the tears and chuckles to even more audiences with 13 wheelchair spaces, accessible toilets, and a gallery-long downstairs bar right under the also-remade triangular Princes Circus thundering above.
Just missing it in 2006, like all good theatre kids I was aware of the songs and the cheeky, inverted childishness. But I don’t think I was quite ready for the energy, TV-like theatricality, and the sheer skill of all involved.
Training musical theatre actors to be gifted puppeteers is the problem facing the 1998 film Armageddon… roughly – but original puppet-master Rick Lyon gets them strung up. We meet Princeton (a transformative Noah Harrison), fresh out of… you got it. Moving to the title of the show, he battles life, love, and a search for purpose. Harrison also plays Rod, a closeted Republican lawyer (ouch), sometimes fleeing offstage with one puppet (the originals from Broadway) and racing back clutching the other. First UK cast member Emily Benjamin gloriously reprises her role as Kate Monster, a schoolteacher with dreams of finding a boyfriend and opening a school for monsters (a vaguely underprivileged, fluffy group). Again, she is also the appropriately named Lucy the Slut, sometimes forced (almost cruelly) to voice both puppets and operate one as her two characters regularly argue (bet you can guess what over). Charlie McCullagh is Trekkie Monster, a fluffy, perverted fan favourite (also part of the aforementioned minority of monsters). Meg Hateley and McCullagh are the Bad Idea Bears (amongst others), floating Care Bears with quite the opposite intention. Gifted voice actors all, and confident (if a little shrill at points) singers, the reflective characterisation – both the puppet floating at their side and their own expressive faces – makes you forget the lack of legs, and interestingly accept the duality without much dissonance.
To give gradient, we have some humans playing humans. Amelia Kinu Muus blasts life and reality into Christmas Eve, a character that could easily be a flat cultural stereotype. Oliver Jacobson is her husband and hopeless comedian Brian. Dionne Ward-Anderson is comic relief within a comedy – quite impressive as Gary, a former child star and now down-and-out handyman and sometime resident of the sewer.
Jason Moore’s direction keeps everything ragtagging along, recreating the TV style it is spawned from. Bubbles, giant puppets, and miniature living rooms play with scale, along with Anna Louizos’s Sesame Street-style set. Close-ups and wide shots are achieved with cropping, animation work, and tight spots (thanks, Tim Lutkin) that constantly move the eyes to different parts of the stage, roaring between rib-tickling songs and tongue-in-cheek dialogue.
The well-known numbers “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” and “The Internet Is for Porn” foreshadow Lopez’s later pearl-clutching work on The Book of Mormon. But it’s the quieter songs – “There’s a Fine, Fine Line” and the final, reassuring “For Now” (a this-too-shall-pass mantra; example: “TRUMP”) – that speak to a depth behind those googly eyes. Laugh or you’ll cry, kind of deal. Twenty years passes by in a flash for these felted creatures, who still have the capacity to bring great joy.
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