Displaying items by tag: Puppets

On a rather ordinary winter day, I settled in to binge-watch Big Little Lies on HBO. In the show, the community of upper-class suburbia signs a petition to ban a musical from performing in the local theater. The play was against the community values, they argued, handling issues of racism, porn, and most dreadfully sex. The bit of the whole thing was that the play had puppets and those puppets simulated sex (gasp!). Watching the outrage of the characters in the show and the eye-rolling of the show’s protagonist of her narrow minded community members, I promised myself if the show ever came to Chicago I would be front row center. Luckily this fool’s spring, that show has officially come to Chicagoland; that show was Avenue Q.

Avenue Q can best be summed up as a satirical parody of PBS’s Sesame Street. The musical comedy features puppets and human actors with upbeat, clever, and catchy music and lyrics exploring adult themes. It won Best Musical, Book, and Score at the 2004 Tony Awards.

We arrive on Avenue Q with Princeton, a bright-eyed recent puppet college grad questioning the very thing I did after graduation with the song “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?”. Princeton, like most of us, wonders what happens now in his life, how can he afford rent? What will he do for a living? What is his purpose? Princeton and his neighbors, both puppets and humans, are all young adults facing problems after school ends and the real world begins. They navigate and explore these issues often through song, problems dealing with money troubles, job issues, sex ("You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)", homosexuality ("If You Were Gay"), unrequited love, racism ("Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"), and wondering when and how you can chase your dreams. There are incredibly relatable numbers that explore why we’re here and what the hell we’re supposed to be doing (“Purpose”), and longing for a more simplistic life (“I Wish I Could Go Back to College”). The musical also boasted profanity, fucking puppets, and I feared I would be asked to leave the theater when I couldn’t stop laughing when the puppet Kate-Monster and her puppet neighbor Trekkie Monster sing about the beauty and awe that is the internet “The Internet Is for Porn.” The Northlight production added some hilarious digital elements to the play during stage prep and scene changes, such as funny NYC facts and signs (free wi-fi ON don’t use for porn/free wi-fi OFF they used it for porn) and play-on-word counting videos like Sesame Street (5-4-3-2-1, 1 Night Stand) to prep for a sex scene in the musical.

Avenue Q is a simultaneously well-known and obscure musical. Many audience members had seen the show while I had only heard of it in recent pop culture. It came out the same year I graduated high school and has aged incredibly well. What once might have seemed outrageous to audiences and critics at the time are rather tame by today’s standards. Some older and more current reviews point not to the content but to the mocking or disparaging parody of the groundbreaking show Sesame Street. To me, Avenue Q is merely the grown-up version of Sesame Street or the big brother who returned home jaded from college and moved in next door because they can’t afford rent. It’s the show that Sesame Street could have become if acquired by HBO from PBS. Said another way, Avenue Q is the Cards Against Humanity to Sesame Street’s Apples to Apples. The show’s humor grounds itself in the realness of stepping out as an adult in the world and it is why it is still relevant and relatable today. I can see it quickly becoming a cult classic amongst younger generations who embrace parody, satire, and humor in an otherwise brutal world.

Avenue Q plays at the Northlight Theater (9501 Skokie Blvd) in Skokie. Northlight Theater continues to deliver incredible productions, and its 2023 lineup is filled with incredible shows. The theater is easily accessible for Chicagoans and suburbanites with a sense of humor. Tickets are available at Northlightcenter.org.

It’s the beginning of a puppet-laden season in theatre this fall. Victory Gardens will be performing Hand to God, the story of a boy whose hand puppet is possessed by the devil, and later in the season, Writers Theatre will produce The Hunter and the Bear, their latest collaboration with Pigpen Theatre Company, which is expected to include the use of shadow puppets as storytelling devices. But first, The House Theatre of Chicago is now presenting their newest original work, A Comedical Tragedy for Mister Punch, a show which explores a fictionalized origin for England’s popular family annihilating marionette, and the minds of the people who came up with him. Featuring the best products of The House’s beloved design team, Mister Punch is a technical marvel, though the script by Kara Davidson is slow to start.

The earliest record of Punch and Judy shows comes from the seventeenth century, and the show is set slightly after that. Punch’s illegal immigrant Italian creator, Pietro Bologna (Adrian Danzig), ekes out an existence while dodging the authorities, as does the thief and street urchin, Charlotte (Sarah Cartwright). Fate brings them together, and Pietro decides he could use her as a bottler, the assistant who introduces shows and collects money. Disguised as a boy named Charlie, Charlotte is initially awful, but the puppets capture her imagination. They have inner life, Pietro tells her, though he guards his creations jealously, and insists that mass murder is the only acceptable ending for Mr. Punch’s stories. When Charlotte learns that Pietro visits a prostitute, Polly (Echaka Agba), whom he regards more as a mistress, she hopes that a softer side of her master might manifest through the puppets if she could only capture some of that affection in the play. But circumstances, and Pietro’s true disposition, are not so kind.

Lee Keenan’s scenic design is similar to the circus theme used in The House’s recently remounted Death and Harry Houdini, only this time, commedia dell’arte masks and puppet pieces dangle from the rafters. John Fournier’s original music contains several unnerving melodies, though naturally, few can compare with the props designed by Eleanor Kahn or with the puppets themselves, created by Jesse Mooney-Bullock. The leering grins of Punch, the crocodile, and the other denizens of his world look even more grotesque in the masks worn by the live actors (costumes by Izumi Inaba). Punch, played by Johnny Arena, appears in the flesh during scenes in which his puppeteers are acting him out, as do Judy (Carolyn Hoerdemann), his much-abused acquaintance, Joey (Joey Steakley), and his other victims. Though The House prides itself on innovative storytelling, few scenes in the show could be more highly theatricalized than these.

Or, at least, that will probably be the case after a few more runs. Though puppetry is often clumsy, more than was optimal seemed to be going wrong at opening, which distorted the pace of the comedy and caused some hesitancy among the actors during fight scenes. This has happened at other House shows, which were able to recover gracefully, but his time, the script was unfocused in the first act to the point where the performers didn’t have much to return to. In the second act, Davidson found her thread, and director Shade Murray was able to put together a story that was as alarming as it was open-ended. But in the first act, precious time was lost to self-indulgent interludes such as the main antagonist doing an impression of House artistic director Nathan Allen.

As annoying as some of the missed opportunities were, what happens in the second act more than redeems the show. We see Danzig’s Pietro as he truly is—not nearly as monstrous as his creation, but enough like him to confuse and disquiet the girl who can’t help seeing him as a friend. Cartwright’s performance takes over near the end, as with increasing desperation she attempts to turn the world of “cathartic violence” Pietro has devised into something kinder and more hopeful. Ironically, the scene which the opening night audience reacted the most viscerally to was one of the few instances of Pietro doing something truly altruistic, due to its graphic nature. The House strongly advises that this show is for teens, at the youngest. But for people able to enjoy and critique the Punch and Judy aesthetic, this show comes recommended.

A Comedical Tragedy for Mister Punch is being performed at the Chopin Theatre through October 23. Tickets are $30-35; for more information, visit TheHouseTheatre.com. Running time is two hours and fifteen minutes with one intermission.