Avenue Q

Avenue Q is the third production presented this year by Nate Butler Studio's full time Musical Theatre course students. It follows hot on the heels of their fabulous previous production, Blood Brothers and it certainly didn't lose by comparison. The extreme contrast in tone and style between these two shows in particular further illustrated the talent and versality of these young performers.

For the uninitiated, the best way to describe the show's unusual format is that it's the theatrical equivalent of the love-child of 'Sesame Street' and 'National Lampoon's Animal House'. This is an ensemble show in the truest sense – the score is lively and at times, relentlessly-paced and the cast were sharp and energetic at every turn. This reviewer hadn't seen a full production before but can't imagine more adorable 'muppety' vocal characterisations coming from a seasoned professional outfit. Every one of the chorus numbers packed a punch – and every individual character shone. I’m loathe to single anyone out, as the ensemble was uniformly brilliant, but it presents a great opportunity to give credit to some performers who missed out on being named the last time. In particular James Bloom as 'Rod' and Jayden Castle as 'Trekkie Monster'. Those two exhibited particularly clever quirks that should not go unappreciated.

In amongst all this gushing there needs to be some downside for balance – I guess, so it has to be mentioned that the staging within LST's Don Craig room did not reap the benefits of being an intimate space on this occasion as it did for Blood Brothers. The open, efficient, floor-level set and interesting, occasionally unconventional blocking undoubtedly would have worked a treat from the point of view of the front two rows of the immersive 'half-round' audience configuration, but unfortunatley the audience in the back couple of rows were left craning their necks or completely unsighted for around 20 percent of the show. Given the quality of this production that's 20% too much – hence mentioning it at all. This production really needed raked seating. If LST is to be the resident venue for this company then they need to work together for the full benefit of patrons and performers alike. After all, theatre tickets ain’t cheap these days.

Rose Cooper