Reviewed by Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas
We went to Beck Center last Saturday to see Avenue Q.
To the Puritans in our midst, we say “Go!” and take your teenagers; rest assured that this School Edition, performed entirely by students, contains no full puppet nudity or explicit puppet sex. How perverse it would be to exclude teens from this witty, satirical take on the trials of young adulthood, the search for jobs, purpose, and a date.
To purists like ourselves, constitutionally suspicious of an edit that changes a raunchy R-rating to a PG-13, we say that you can live without Miss Thistletwat and Lucy T. Slut (Miss Butz and just Lucy @ Beck) because the real elephant in the room, shrinking pay and opportunity, is front and center.
(For a specific list of the changes from the original Avenue Q to the School Edition, click here.)
You might go to the Beck’s Avenue Q with reduced expectations as we did. You’ll see the expected audience of parents and peers; the parents converged around the lobby board before the show, taking photos of the photos of their offspring; the youth in the audience fresh faced and alarmingly polite but laughing slyly at every joke in the show.
But Beck’s youthful cast deserves a wider audience. Their puppets took on a life of their own. Vocals were consistently strong and cleanly miked. Timing among the actors and the offstage orchestra was tight, tight, tight down to the last rim shot.
The Ensemble, often the weak link in youth and community theater productions, was a genuine asset here, carrying out their acting assignments effectively and executing Choreographer Sarah Clare’s patterns without an apparent hitch.
We actually preferred Beck’s romantic male lead, Anthony Heffner as Princeton, to the Broadway Cast lead on YouTube. Heffner and his puppet projected wishful, vulnerable youth, so much more appropriate to the role than the consummate professionalism of the Broadway lead. Not that Heffner didn’t rock out in his big vocal number, “Whoa whoa I’m gonna find my purpose.”
Carleigh Spence had big fun with the romantic female lead, puppet Kate Monster, with her live wire physical presence, big vocals, and cute facial features. Think Drew Barrymore back when that scion of theatrical nobility still seemed to have potential.
Puppet roommates Nicky and Rod, played by Michael Fox and Shaun Dillon, gave themselves to a sympathetic and winning portrayal of best-friends-one-of -whom-may-be-gay.
But the biggest vocal surprises at Beck were Meryl Juergens with her improbable foghorn of a voice for Trekkie Monster and Emma Lampe as Lucy, channeling Peggy Lee at her most sultry.
Yes, we confess to going to the Beck with reduced expectations, but everything turned out better than expected. We looked with patronizing eyes at the set, apparently by Scenic / Lighting Designer Joseph Carmola. “Cheesy and underbuilt,” we thought but then we read the program note. “An outer borough of New York City.” Perfectly true to life.
At Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood 44107 thru 2/17. Show times 7:30pm Fri & Sat and 3pm Sun. Student Matinee 10am Thurs 2/14. Tickets $10 to $12. To purchase click here or phone 216-521-2540.
[Photo by Wetzler’s Studios]
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.