PicksInSix Review: Avenue Q - Dunes Summer Theatre
Dunes’ ‘Avenue Q’ Finds Its Purpose!
PicksInSix® Gold Review | Ed Tracy
There is no denying that you can do anything with a puppet in your hand and no better example on stage right now than the terrific revival of the 2004 Tony Award–winning musical “Avenue Q” playing at the Dunes Summer Theatre. The hilarious send up of the adult-themed Sesame Street is the inspiration of Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx who wrote the lyrics and music. The book by Jeff Whitty is set on a block in lower Manhattan where neighbors Princeton, Kate Monster, Rod, Nicky, Trekkie Monster, Lucy, Mrs. T, Brian, Christmas Eve and the superintendent, Gary Coleman, all deal with life’s challenges from jobs, relationships, and racism, and sex to love, responsibility and the importance of helping others.
The show, directed by Danny Kapinos, a Chicago-based director and co-Artistic Director of Blank Theatre Company, has assembled one of the finest ensemble casts seen here in recent years, led by Quinn Kelch (Princeton) and Mika Wurf (Kate), playing two twentysomething loners who find friendship, love and their own purpose together. Kelch, a rising talent who is well-known to Chicago audiences, is terrific here, playing both Princeton, the newly-minted college graduate and Rod, the closeted gay neighbor. Wurf, a senior at the Boston Conservatory of Music with an extraordinary voice, is perfect as the shy, demure Kate who breaks away from her quiet existence to find that there is more to life when you share it with someone you love. The two are wonderfully matched together, displaying wide-ranging versatility in a challenging show that demands precision in movement, timing and comic delivery.
The young lovers are influenced by everyone who live on Avenue Q. There’s Rod (Kelch) and Nicky (Josh Bernaski and Maya Moreau) who are sorting out Rod’s conflicted lifestyle; Trekkie Monster (Bernaski) whose passion is internet porn; Lucy (Moreau), the vixen who seduces all in her path; and, the humans: the aspiring comedian Brian (Clay W. Muir) and his partner Christmas Eve (Aubrey Malito), an Asian phycologist and Gary Coleman (Micah Hughs) the super with a bit of an attitude about his rocky road after TV stardom. It is all for laughs with a dash of clever technology that pays homage to the Sesame Street educational themes along the way.
The delightful score overflows with musical gems from Wurf’s sweet and beautifully sung ballad “There’s A Fine, Fine Line” and Malito’s stellar “The More You Ruv Someone” and “I Wish I Could Go Back To College” by the trio of Kelch, Wurf and Bernaski, to the rollicking “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist,” “The Internet Is For Porn,” and “There is Life Outside Your Apartment.” Music director Aaron Kaplan with Associate Music Director/Conductor Sachio Nang and seven musicians knock Steven Oremus’s full-bodied arrangements out of the park. Credit goes to Jake Tillman for an outstanding sound design, balancing the superb vocals of this enormously talented ensemble with the musicians effortlessly.
Scenically, Michael Lasswell has again designed and constructed an impressive, multi-story Lower East Side street scene with textured brick facades and a cityscape in the distance. With Arturo Pozos’s evocative lighting design and Emily Chidalek’s colorful costumes, “Avenue Q” is visually bright, festive and fun.
Combining live action with music and puppets in not an easy task for actors and the special puppet training by Andrew Lund is expertly evidenced throughout and in particular with some subtle—and some not so subtle—activities that give “Avenue Q” its’ R-rated guidance, spurred on by a couple of devious Bad Idea Bears.
Each of the ensemble members assume multiple roles throughout, but the performance of the night belongs to the enormously talented and versatile Kelch who, on more than one occasion, is required to exit as one puppet character and return immediately as another. I was confounded by an especially clever sequence where Kelch is literally in two places at the same time. A phenomenal sleight of hand in a production that is sure to be a colossal hit for Artistic Director Steve Scott, Managing Director Elise Kermani and everyone on board for the Dunes Summer Theatre’s 75th Anniversary Season.
PHOTO|Tony Martin
Dunes Summer Theatre
presents
Avenue Q
288 Shady Oak Drive
Michigan City, IN
through August 9
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