Avenue Q review – A Gen-X time capsule that maybe should have stayed buried

Noah Harrison in 'Avenue Q' - (Matt Crockett)

Think back to the turn of the century. Political correctness had “gone mad”, so it was said, and the cutting edge of comedy was a battleground for the busting of new taboos. Gen-Xers, weaned on the ironic, pop-culture-literature nectar of The Simpsons, were making their own stabs at transgression. It was an era that gave us Family Guy, South Park, and, on stage, Avenue Q, a musical that dared to ask the all-important question: what if the puppets in Sesame Street were all professionally listless, sexually active young adults? Audiences, cynical and pop-culturally savvy themselves, ate it up. Avenue Q beat fledgling box office behemoth Wicked to the big Tony Award win that year, a victory for the snarky contrarian. But that was then, and this is now.

Twenty-three years have passed since Avenue Q premiered (in its initial incarnation, off-Broadway), and 16 since its West End run came to an end. Now it’s back, revived at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre. The world has changed, and Avenue Q has not. Bar the odd modified line – a reference to streaming here, a joke about AI there, and one whooped-at insertion of “TRUMP!” – this is the same show as ever, its crassness, problematic edges, and idiosyncratically Bush-era sensibility preserved in theatrical amber.