Market Theatre’s ‘Avenue Q’ Offers Warm, Funny Lessons on Challenges of Growing Up

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

The joke at the heart of “Avenue Q” is not simply that puppets swear and have sex. It is that the reassuring language of children’s television survives into adulthood, where its promises become considerably harder to keep.

Learn to share. Be yourself. Find something you are good at. Useful instructions until rent comes due, a relationship collapses or a college graduate discovers that a degree has not arrived with a corresponding sense of purpose.

That gap between childhood reassurance and adult uncertainty provides “Avenue Q” its comedy and its warmth. The Market Theatre’s production, directed by Clare Shaffer, brings Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s songs and Jeff Whitty’s book to Anderson with an eight-person cast, a collection of locally built puppets and a neighborhood full of people whose lives have not gone according to plan.

The show is emphatically for adults. Its language, sexual content and deliberately provocative songs are not disguised by any resemblance to “Sesame Street.” Yet the profanity is less important than the affection underneath it. This is a musical about young adults who have grown a little older without necessarily feeling grown up.

And it produces a room full of smiles for most of the production.

Princeton, played seamlessly by Seth Hilderbrand, arrives on the street with a bachelor’s degree in English and the expectation that something meaningful should happen next. What happens instead is a search for affordable housing, boring work and a reason to get out of bed.

His zany collection of people in his new neighborhood provide companionship rather than answers.

With a sweet voice Taylor Baxley is forlorn as Kate Monster, a kindergarten assistant with ambitions of her own and an understandable desire to be loved. Hilderbrand also plays the uptight Rod, whose carefully managed identity is complicated by feelings for his roommate, Nicky. Joey McClain perfectly evokes every non-named character in the muppet world as Nicky, and is effervescent as the entertaining Trekkie Monster, the neighborhood’s enthusiast for an internet activity that supplies one of the score’s most notorious songs.

The human residents are no more certain of themselves than their fabric neighbors. Jason Gerhard as the lively Brian, an aspiring comedian, and Katelin Orr is Christmas Eve, a highly educated therapist whose professional prospects have not matched her credentials and is hopelessly and comically unfit for such a job. Lyric Dukes is a hilariously hyper fictionalized Gary Coleman, the former child star recast as the building’s superintendent, a particularly pointed presence in a story about wondering whether one’s best opportunities have already passed.

Lindy McCloy channels Mae West as the racy Lucy, along with one of the Bad Idea Bears, who are ready and able to offer the worst possible advice, as well as additional puppeteering duties. Nikki Hagel supplies second-hand puppetry and adds humor to the chaos as the other Bad Idea Bear and Mrs. T.

The bears are a compact explanation of how otherwise sensible people get into trouble. They do not offer complicated arguments. They merely make the worst option sound cheerful.

Lopez and Marx build a fun score around the musical habits of educational television: bright melodies, repetition and the inviting suggestion that an awkward subject can be understood if everyone sings about it.

The subjects have changed.

The hilarious “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” hits a sweet spot in its message that we can all get along even when we are often clueless about what is inappropriate.

“The Internet Is for Porn” and “Schadenfreude” turn the instructional song into a vehicle for uncomfortable admissions, with humor that depends on the distance between a friendly musical form and a distinctly unfriendly truth.

But “Avenue Q” is not sustained by shock alone. Kate’s “There’s a Fine, Fine Line” brings the story into more vulnerable territory, considering the uncertain boundary between a relationship and time spent hoping for one.

“I Wish I Could Go Back to College” finds another recognizable ache, but also jolting reality, of nostalgia for a period when the next step seemed to have been arranged by someone else.

These quieter songs explain why the musical has more substance than its publicity-friendly titles suggest. Its characters are ridiculous, but their disappointments are real.

The play itself occasionally follows their indecision too faithfully. Romantic complications and misunderstandings can make the narrative feel less focused than the individual songs. Still, the musical’s strongest idea remains intact that adulthood does not necessarily produce certainty, and uncertainty need not prevent connection.

The cast makes two kinds of performance work together: the visible actor’s expression and the puppet’s apparent life. The audience is invited to recognize both without insisting that one cancel the other.

The puppets are also a substantial production undertaking. Bella Mello and Eliot Thomas are credited with puppets, costumes and props. Rather than renting an existing collection, the company built its own, including multiple versions of some characters for costume changes and quick transitions. The effort makes the entire production a cut above.

Local theater legend Julie Florin provides music direction, with choreography by Roxanne Vogel. Both are the trains that carry the show with energy that never wanes.

Noah Taylor is producer and scenic designer; Colin Moroney designs lighting, and Chris Liles handles sound design and operation. David Veatch is stage manager, assisted in the production’s direction by Britney Ricciardelli. Hailie Gold serves as intimacy coordinator, and Savvy Thompson as dialect coach.

The show’s conclusion, “For Now,” offers a smaller version of reassurance than Princeton initially seeks, reminding him that while his purpose may not become obvious or that every problem will be solved, circumstances can and do change.

That consolation is what makes “Avenue Q” more than an adult joke told with children’s toys. Beneath its misbehavior is a musical willing to admit that people can be lonely, foolish, unemployed, contradictory and still worth caring about, and that growing up is not a lesson anyone finishes.

“Avenue Q” runs through Oct. 26 at The Market Theatre. Tickets here.