Luica’s Blog

I went to see Fuerzabruta a couple of weeks ago with a friend who was staying with us for the weekend.

It was highly recommended by a colleague - his exact words were: "it sounds a bit wanky but really it’s not – great fun and you must see it before it closes." I ended up buying two tickets from another colleague who couldn’t make it to the show. I wasn’t disappointed.

It was a great experience; I say ‘experience’ because I’m not sure how else to describe it. It was a mix of everything; it has a story to tell, loud music, choreography, moving stages and lots of audience involvement. Within an hour, we were shuffled to different positions and busy looking at things happening from different perspectives. One minute, one of the main characters was placed in the middle of the venue apparently running away from something; next minute, the curtains around the venue were drawn and two women were running along the curtains - in the air! (they were suspended by wires of course). Meanwhile, the lighting was changed from strong to soft and dreamlike.

The performers were fully engaged and so were the audience. Another scene was two actors running (in the air again) while they were separated by a large silver disc, and were desparate to get connected to each other. Other cast members were exhaustingly swinging the disc, and the audenice (some of those could almost touch the dics) were astonished.

The most remarkable scene was when the stage was set directly above the audience. There was a large square plastic pool hanging in the air, which was filled with shallow water (not a lot but enough to create the most impressive effects). The performers then jumped up and landed flat on the water surface (it looked painful!), splashing the water whilst others laid on the water, being pushed by waves. I still have that scene vividly in my mind - the effect with the water, the natural movement of the bodies and the fantastic colour of the lights were beyond words. I will go to see it again if I get a chance.

I hadn’t been to the theatre for a while and was excited to hear about AVENUE Q coming to London. My friend, Queenie, highly recommended the show to me when I was in New York a couple of years ago but it was too popular to get in. Finally, they have a preview in London this month.

It’s just like your life… only funnier! is the official tag line, however, I am not sure how much this applies to UK audiences. More importantly, I can’t say AVENUE Q is funny! It is defintely entertaining and has a lot of things to be said on the good sides, but it’s just not funny. (And definitely wasn’t the witty, sarcastic kind of funny that Brits tend to go for these days.)

The cast was amazing throughout the performance — the mannerisms and movements of the puppets was very well done and believable. The set was simple but clever. It easily showed both the interior and exterior of the home of Princeton (a fresh graduate who was searching for a purpose in life), Kate Monster (a kindergarten teaching assistant who dreamt of having her own school for monsters), Rod (a closet gay Repulican), Nick (Rod’s messy flatmate), Brain (a wannabe comedian), Christmas Eve (the Asian American wife of Brain), Gary (a used-to-be child-star) and Trekkie Monster (who is obssessed with internet porn).

Although the songs were hardly the most impressive element of the show, they were certainly catchy and easy to remember. I found myself annoyingly humming ‘Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist’ and ‘If You Were Gay’ for the rest of the evening and the day after! ‘Schadenfreude‘ was actually quite a funny joke but the rest of the songs like ‘The Internet Is For Porn’ needed more variety in terms of lyrics.

In short, AVENUE Q was entertaining and the performance of the cast was brilliant but it is just not all that witty or funny. I still think that it deserved to win three Tony Award in 2004 for Best New Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.