Avenue Q, an X-rated musical satire of “Sesame Street” performed by a cast of singing puppeteers, opened last night on Broadway, and I reviewed it for this morning’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt:
“Avenue Q,” which opened last night at the Golden Theatre, is as raucously, cruelly, unsparingly funny as “Big River” is sweet and warm-hearted….The songs, written by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, are wicked, often unprintable parodies of such smile-and-be-sensitive ditties as “Bein’ Green” and “The Rainbow Connection.” One of them, “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” is so dead on target that I halfway expected the theater to be picketed during the last verse: “Everyone’s a little bit racist–it’s true/But everyone is just about as racist–as you!/If we all could just admit/That we are racist a little bit/And everyone stopped being so P.C.,/Maybe we could live in–harmony!”
To read the rest of the review, pick up a copy of the Journal and turn to “Weekend Journal,” the Friday arts-and-lifestyle section. Then go right out and get a ticket, because I have a feeling that this show is going to ring the gong very loudly, in its own weird way.