Theatre review: Avenue Q

After Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx (both contributing music and lyrics) and Jeff Whitty's (book) Avenue Q closed (for the third time) its original West End production, my favourite musical didn't stay away too long, with smaller-scale productions and tours meaning I and a group of similarly addicted friends could keep getting our live fix. It's been away for a few years though, meaning what I think is my fourteenth time seeing it live is in fact a 20th-anniversary production of it opening at the Noël Coward (the first show to play there after the theatre had been renamed.) Now at a reduced-capacity Shaftesbury Theatre while its upper level is being repaired, original director Jason Moore returns for a show that was always being tweaked to keep up with the times, and has now had a few extra rewrites to bring it into 2026.

But not too many, as this is definitely a show that wasn't broke and didn't need fixing: You know the drill, it's Sesame Street's mix of real humans, puppet humans and puppet monsters, in scenes and songs that teach life lessons. About porn, racism, romantic disappointment and noisy sex.

Recent graduate Princeton (Noah Harrison) moves into the titular New York neighbourhood, makes new friends and a potential romantic connection in Kate Monster (understudy Meg Hateley,) and faces up to the fact that his life won't work out the way he always thought it would. Along the way we also get the wedding of Brian (Oliver Jacobson) and Christmas Eve (Amelia Kinu Muus,) plus a falling-out between definitely-not-gay flatmates Rod (Harrison) and Nicky (understudy Jonathan Carlton.)

The show is a mix of the original Broadway script and the West End one along with the new changes - the (better) West End introduction to Gary Coleman is back, but per the original staging the former child celebrity is played by a woman - Dionne Ward-Anderson's beaming grin very much defining him by his best song, "Schadenfreude." We got front row seats for this, which is always fun when possible because you get to see the details of Rick Lyon's puppet designs, and get the full blast of the as-cute-as-they-are-evil Bad Idea Bears (Carlton and understudy Jasmine Beel.)

A number of the original cast (notably Giles Terera, Jon Robyns, Julie Atherton and Simon Lipkin) have become award-winners and stage stalwarts, and it's easy to imagine the new batch of actors doing the same over the next couple of decades. Along with the updates to the script there's a couple of technical upgrades - playing for the first time on a stage with an orchestra pit means Anna Louizos' set no longer has to accommodate the musicians and can incorporate some slightly more elaborate changes, while I'm sure Lucy the Slut's introduction with "Special" has got a lot more... acrobatic. But upgrades are never introduced where they're not needed, and Nina Dunn's video designs retain a scrappy educational TV feel.

One of the posters outside the theatre has nailed the show's attraction: "The musical for everyone still figuring it out." It's still true for those of us now twenty years older, but if there's nostalgia in this revival it's a very Avenue Q brand of nostalgia which looks suspiciously like trolling its ageing audience. Most obviously in "Mix Tape," which in the original was about a literal tape, later becoming Princeton burning Kate a mix CD, and which by now is a playlist: The rewrite where Kate explains that making a mixtape is a form of flirting from the olden days gets one of the biggest and most knowing laughs of the night. So the existing fans come away satisfied, but I've no doubt this iteration of Avenue Q will also create a new generation of fans who'll be coming back in 2046.

Avenue Q by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty is booking until the 29th of August at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Matt Crockett.