Avenue Q and Stereotypes

Last week my good friend Dave from work asked if I wanted to go see Avenue Q with him. Me, having no idea what it was, said yes simply because I thought it would break up the monotony of my weekends.

So anyway, here I was today, without knowing exactly what to expect - I didn't even know where the theatre was - and bam! Wow the show was absolutely amazing; I'm very glad I went. The premise was exciting and novel, using a mix of performers and puppets on-stage. Well-written scripting, great set and band, puppets that brought back memories of childhood, and the performances were solid.

Mitchell Butel who plays Princeton/Rod has a resoundingly brilliant singing voice, and an uncanny ability to switch modes at will, giving his two puppets distinct voices and characters, sometimes in the same scene. Christina O'Neill also gets props for pairing her beautiful voice with an amusing attempt to sing in an asian-ised accent.

There is even much food for thought for those who enjoy thinking too deeply into things, like me. Right now though, I do want to address one issue: the use of stereotypes in the show.

In our modern-day politically correct society, "stereotype" has become a somewhat negative word. It is often associated with racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on. Most of the time I would have no problems with that association, as much of the time the stereotypes do reinforce negative representations of minorities, allowing vicious prejudices to fester and grow.

Having said that, Avenue Q isn't politically correct, and it's wonderfully so. The show uses a bunch of stereotypes, and gets away with it because it doesn't try to hide them. At first I found it a bit confronting, but as a plot device it was brilliant, as it sets up character profiles without actually doing the setting up work.

I'm not saying that it's ok to stereotype if you make it really funny. In fact if I sit here and theorise about the whole musical I'd say that, taken the wrong way, it could worsen social injustices. But I know I can read past that and enjoy Avenue Q for the great entertainment that it is, and I hope that other people who see it will be able to understand that for themselves too.