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Interviews
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Bobby Lopez and Jeff Marx Philip Fisher meets the creators of the award-winning Broadway hit Avenue Q Avenue Q has been one of the surprise Broadway successes of recent years. This combination of Sesame Street style puppetry and adult themes has won a lot of friends. If you go to New York and ask somebody for one show to go and see, there is a reasonable chance that they will recommend this musical. As its creators explain, "The metaphor is a children's show to tell you about adult life" and it is in this paradox that the attraction lies. The show started Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre, where it won a host of awards prior to transferring to the Golden Theatre in the middle of 2003 and it has played there ever since. It was also triply successful at the 2004 Tony Awards winning Best Musical, Best Score of a Musical for Jeff Marx and Robert Lopez and Best Book of a Musical for Jeff Whitty. As 2006 dawned, the show's creators, Jeff Marx and Bobby Lopez were on a high. "We broke records in New York and Las Vegas last week. The gross take in both cities was more than those theatres have ever seen before". This reflected a general Broadway boom despite high ticket prices that reached over $250 for a handful of the very best seats. Now, there are plans to transport this quintessentially American comedy to the United Kingdom. The original idea had been an initial run at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, with a hoped-for West End transfer following on. After recent discussions with the Cameron Mackintosh Group who will be representing Avenue Q in London, there was a strong possibility that the musical will go straight into the West End in the summer of 2006. In order to work better for London audiences, one character who is well known in America, Gary Coleman from TV show Diff'rent Strokes will become a more universal Gary, although the plan is to rewrite the part so that those who recognise the original will not be disappointed. An extra change in London is that this character we played by a man rather than a woman. One attraction of the show is the way in which puppets and humans interact. Despite cast changes, this has worked well. According to Marx, "Our first cast were all Sesame Street veterans and had been doing puppetry forever. The replacements hadn't done it before but they have learned it fantastically". The show's origination was somewhat unusua,l as Marx explains. "We discussed this and thought it would be a TV show with the puppeteers hidden from sight. At an audition though, the audience liked it when they could see the puppets and we just left it like that". The pair had been working as musical theatre songwriters and met when they were just out of graduate school. However, their background is not quite what might be expected since Jeff Marx graduated in law and "I had originally gone along to the workshop looking for some law clients. Writing is much more fun though". Their first work together was on a proposed Muppet movie, Kermit Prince of Denmark, which they sent to the Henson Corporation which controls these matters but, to date, has not accepted the screenplay. Having realised the constraints in trying to develop a new Muppet project, Lopez explains, "We decided to create our own characters and then we could control the whole thing". The primary reason that they have been able to work together so well is that they share a sense of humour. Unusually, they also each write both words and music, so that this collaboration is very much of two like-minded individuals rather than the more common writer plus musician. One of the problems that they faced was to write music that sounded simple enough for a children's show but was actually a lot more sophisticated. "It is not so easy to write a simple song that doesn't sound like London Bridge is Falling Down. It was really tough to write things that sounded right in an adult children's show but mix it with more complex stuff like schadenfreude". Though their stage creations may seem outlandish, the authors are happy to assert that "all of the characters are based on ourselves and our friends, but they are very honed. For example, Trekkie Monster is based on Jeff". He is the most gruesome and hairy of the characters, perhaps reminding some of the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. They go on to emphasise that "most aren't a direct correlation, although we were not making them up". On being asked about factors to which they attribute the extraordinary popularity of Avenue Q, the guys have no doubts at all "it's because it's about normal people today living in New York City. That's why we use puppets. If it was just us it would be too normal. We wanted the puppets and the humour to let us look at the reality. We needed a layer of fantasy and that's provided by the puppets". At the moment, the show is spreading itself, with a Scandinavian tour and a high-school version in production. There is also interest all around the world for a show that should be eminently transferable, once one or two specifics are ironed out. Jeff and Bobby are certainly keen to expand. "We have been thrilled with the success in America and the need to see how it develops elsewhere". Their next project is a movie for Universal pictures but, although it is a comedy, they emphasise that "there will be no puppets. It is more like one of those Steve Martin comedies except that it is a musical". They are also excited about a prospective stage musical involving two of the creative team from South Park, a programme that is spoofed in Avenue Q. This is how they met what they describe as their heroes. "They saw our cartoons and asked to meet us and we found out that we had the same kind of sensibility". Even after 2½ years on Broadway, Jeff Marx and Bobby Lopez can still act like wide-eyed innocents who cannot believe in their luck. "This is a dream come true. It took three and a half years to write it and one more to get it on to Broadway, which makes it very fast by usual standards". They still remember back to the hard life before they hit the big time though. "We stopped being interns and temps by writing a show about being interns and temps". They are now enjoying the fruits of having a hit Broadway show. As Bobby says, "The show has bought us better apartments and more of a life". Much to Jeff's amusement, it also brought an extra benefit to Bobby since "he married one of our fans". The lovely lady may not be quite as amused, since she has apparently been drafted into the show embodied in the very cute but not wholly human leading character of Kate Monster.
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