Vegas Baby! - Part 3

The shows:

We booked tickets for two shows, which I’ve been wanting to see in the same way forever.

In college, I always meant to catch an off-off-Broadway Blue Man Group show in New York, but alas, never got around to it.

In grad school, I read and heard amazing things about the puppet musical, Avenue Q, which was supposed to be Sesame Street on acid. But alas, I didn’t catch it while it was on off-Broadway. And I didn’t catch it when it went to Broadway. So I was really happy when I heard about it’s controversial move to Las Vegas – instead of doing a nationwide tour, they went straight into the theater at the Wynn.



However, every time, we went anywhere near the outside parameter of the Wynn, we heard the same few phrases of Avenue Q’s title song: “We live on Avenue Q-uuuu-oooo! Your friends do, too! Here on Avenue Q-uuuu—oooo!” Just these few phrases over and over again. By the second day I was thinking puppetcide.

Luckily, Avenue Q turned out to be a lot better than the annoying loop playing outside the hotel. To my surprise, Q turned out to have a really strong book steeped in 20-something angst.

I’m steeped in 20-something angst, so of course, it had me at go.

Though there were a few problems, including a somewhat shoddily drawn main female character, who made such amazingly illogical decisions where the main male character was concerned it was embarrassingly obvious that

1. This character was a bit of a plot puppet (sadly, no pun intended), doing whatever the writer needed in order to move the story along in a certain direction.

and

2. The writer was a man.



But the entire beginning and most of the end was such a good time. Plus, Gary Coleman is a major character. So I eventually forgave the shoddy middle.



As for the Blue Man Group, I will say this to the deep, deep cynics out there. Despite their glitzy new home at the Venetian and their bigger and better effects, The Blue Man Group is not a tourist trap and in fact, remains one of the best examples of interactive theater and performance art that I have ever seen.

From the beginning to the end I felt I was in the presence of true art and it made me ashamed of what I do as an artist.

So yeah, I liked it okay.