A lot of stuff goes into my brain, some of it by choice. If I decided to watch, read, play, or do it, I'd like to talk about it here. I'm a musician, a sometime actor, a frequent player of electronic and table-top games, and a lapsed reader (though I'm getting better). I write long and awkward sentences, because the more things resemble Douglas Adams' writing, the more I want to live in the world. Thanks for reading.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Avenue Q at Lower Ossington Theatre

I went to see Avenue Q with Sarene, Mike, Clarence, Adrian and a few other people I didn't know.

When I arrived, I learned that Deborah, Patrick, Eugene, Mallory and a few other people I did know were already coming to see it.

This is because Kira, whom I didn't know that well but know a bit better now, is in the show.

The show was amazing.

I'd been looking forward to seeing it since the early 2000s, and in the time I'd been waiting:

1. I'd bought my mother the soundtrack CD
2. I'd tried and failed twice to see it on trips to New York City
3. Everyone I'd sung in choirs with had seen it and kvelled ceaselessly
4. I'd given up my seat to see it in Toronto years later, to a friend who deeply regretted seeing it in my place, having found it uninspired and upsetting
5. I'd started singing and acting in community theatre
6. I'd gone from being an early-twenties B.A. graduate to being a mid-thirties double-bachelor, gainfully employed and in a stable relationship with a girl and two cats
7. I'd loved and lost and loved and lost and loved
8. The Internet has gone from just being used for porn to being used for farmville as well.

Many other things have happened in that time, but sticking to the "working memory" rule of 7+/-2. I decided to stick with that list.

So let's talk about what happens when I finally see the show. Sitting in the seats, they pipe in only the finest of Muppet-and-CTW-related music - from "Put down the Duckie" to "Reading Rainbow", my youth and early adolescence descended upon me in waves, disarming me to any immediate shortcomings of the show.

Not that the show really had shortcomings. The one substitute player, in the role of Trekkie Monster, delivered flawless timing and tone. All of the performers were amazing, though it took me a moment to warm up to Adam Proulx's portrayal of Princeton (his "Rod" was immediately charming, however, and that made it much easier for me to get into the spirit of Princeton). Brian was lost a little bit in the sound balancing - his voice didn't have the same piercing quality as the puppet performers, which threatened to drown him in the cartoony soundscape. And I was also a little guarded about the necessarily-racist portrayal of Christmas Eve. Honestly, her lines are written exchanging Ls and Rs; she's sort of an amalgam of every crass bit of Full Metal Jacket, South Pacific and Mickey Rooney from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

There's something resonant, however, about the initial disgust with the broad portrayal of the human characters. The audience is presented with an immediate cognitive dissonance. You are asked to overcome your initial revulsion with the portrayal in the show, approaching it from a critical perspective. You overcome your aversion to the subversive messages in the songs - that racism is A-OK (in small doses), that the Internet is for Porn, that Schadenfreude is natural and to be celebrated - and start to listen to them like you would a stand up comedian.

Now, no comedian asks you to take their messages and preach them out in the world. But they do, at their best, challenge you to think of their absurd conclusions and what your own absurd opinions were on the subject matter when you walked in and took your seat. The late Patrice O'Neal and Chris Rock are particularly adept at this, getting the audience to follow them down a winding path, accidentally drawing a horrifying conclusion about themselves. It's not that they mean it; it's just that self-examination yields some troubling outcomes.

So, dark comedy would shine out of the writing.

But the greater part of the magic was the effortless way that the players directed my gaze - I started, as an actor, obsessively trying to watch their presentations, their faces, their body language - to the puppets themselves. With their eyes focused on their puppets, Kira and Adam and the rest were clearly stepping out of their own shoes and investing themselves in the puppets' stories. I couldn't help but follow along.

I'm glad I saw the show when I did. Had I been who and where I was when the show premiered almost ten years ago, I would have squirmed my way through it. This time I just watched, and laughed -- too loudly -- and occasionally gave in and sang.