The Selladoor National Tours
Time Out
The most lovable felt creations this side of Kermit and Miss Piggy are back ...there’s plenty of humanity in these puppets. - Tom Wicker
Sardines Magazine
Puppet designer Paul Jomain and his team have created a luscious ensemble of expressive puppets with huge emotive eyes and the ability to be manipulated to great effect; revealing anger, happiness, joy and masterfully recreating perhaps the steamiest sex scene ever witnessed on stage. - Zee Gaines
Herald Express
...the cute and bright puppets- which wouldn’t look out of place on Sesame Street- that are the stars of the show. - Dawn Ellis
Secrets of Oxford
...the puppets are so terrific you find yourself connecting with them from the start!
Time Out
The most lovable felt creations this side of Kermit and Miss Piggy are back ...there’s plenty of humanity in these puppets. - Tom Wicker
Sardines Magazine
Puppet designer Paul Jomain and his team have created a luscious ensemble of expressive puppets with huge emotive eyes and the ability to be manipulated to great effect; revealing anger, happiness, joy and masterfully recreating perhaps the steamiest sex scene ever witnessed on stage. - Zee Gaines
Herald Express
...the cute and bright puppets- which wouldn’t look out of place on Sesame Street- that are the stars of the show. - Dawn Ellis
Secrets of Oxford
...the puppets are so terrific you find yourself connecting with them from the start!
Upstairs At The Gatehouse - Highgate, London
Time Out - London
...Director John Plews’s production team boasts many ‘Avenue Q’ stalwarts, including puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt and puppet creator Paul Jomain. Such experienced hands lend the production real swagger and gloss.
West End Frame
...The puppets (designed by Paul Jomain) are quite spectacular...
Backstage Pass
...The puppets are amazingly detailed, made by Paul Jomain...
BroadwayBaby.com
...prime credit has to go to puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt. The cast perform as if they’d been puppeteers from childhood.
...Director John Plews’s production team boasts many ‘Avenue Q’ stalwarts, including puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt and puppet creator Paul Jomain. Such experienced hands lend the production real swagger and gloss.
West End Frame
...The puppets (designed by Paul Jomain) are quite spectacular...
Backstage Pass
...The puppets are amazingly detailed, made by Paul Jomain...
BroadwayBaby.com
...prime credit has to go to puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt. The cast perform as if they’d been puppeteers from childhood.
Paul Jomain, Katie Bradley, Leigh Lothian and Nigel Plaskitt with the puppet cast of Avenue Q
Published: 02 May, 2013
by RICHARD OSLEY
EVERYBODY’S a little bit racist, sometimes... So the creatures who live in Avenue Q will sing at you.
Big eyed like Elmo and Kermit, they look as cute as the smiley animals and monsters drawn from our summer holiday recollections of watching Sesame Street after Why Don’t You?
But these little guys have sharper tongues and watch more internet porn than Big Bird.
A cult fan-base will need no introduction, of course, to Trekkie Monster and his colleagues.
Their show ran successfully in the West End after being brought here from Broadway by Cameron Macintosh in 2006 and the groupies went back two, three, four, 20 times to see it over again.
Its success was slightly unexpected but in hindsight predictable. Puppets swearing, being lewd, might sound a bit old hat, but this is far detached from a 1970s ventriloquist, short on laughs and fresh from Blankety Blank, trying to embarrass an audience into laughs with eff words.
It’s not Emu grabbing at a man’s nutsack. It’s creative and, more importantly, funnier than that.
What’s new is that for the first time in the UK, the licensing of Avenue Q is out for the field, meaning it can be put on beyond the big theatres in central London.
And the first place it will be staged since coming on the open market is Upstairs At The Gatehouse in Highgate Village. Ahead of the game, ahead of what might be quite few installations of Avenue Q across the country with varying quality control, they’ve been working on their own ranks of puppets since January in preparation.
Nearly 30 of them, hand-stitched in the workshops of two creators who worked on the original run, Nigel Plaskitt and Paul Jomain, are nearly all set and the pair are understandably protective.
In the rehearsal rooms, nobody puts their hand up one (if it can be said less crudely, do write in) without cleansing in bacterial handwash. But then, all of a sudden, the puppets command your gaze. Interviews with their masters are strangely conducted while looking into their felt eyes.
Both Nigel and Paul have the Jim Henson Company on their CVs, as well as a host of other puppet productions such as the Johnny Vegas ad monkey, now working it for PG Tips. Nigel also worked on Spitting Image – “there’s often talk about bringing it back, but cost is the factor”.
There is a chat about the painstaking work which goes into making our new friends, and then comes the crushing blow from the pair: “The puppets only last for about two years and then there’s quite a bit of cannibalisation.”
So, those saucer-eyed faces who somehow are capable of generating more empathy than a “real actor” suffer from pretty speedy wear and tear and end up in a refuse pit, once all the best bits are taken for future projects. How sad! Not an industry for anybody who struggled to part with their childhood cuddlies.
To get a sense of that, one of the main stars of the show, put on here by the theatre’s boss John Plews, is made, not from some other-world fabric, but material initially meant to be an off-white bed throw.
Paul says: “Parts of the puppets can come from anywhere, but over the years I’ve developed an eye for what can work and what can’t, and where to get it.”
Nigel adds: “The show has no official connection with Sesame Street or the Muppets, other than a lot of people who have worked on it have some connection. I think they thought there was no point trying to stop the show from a legal point of view, especially when they saw how popular it was.
This wasn’t a show attacking Sesame Street or mocking it, more it was a show that showed how much affection people had for it. Its story is about real life.”
Avenue Q almost created a new style of its own. The characters do not fling up from behind sofas. Instead, no attempt is made to conceal those at the controls.
It works, and it means actors more used to singing and dancing in musicals are hired, learn the skills of working with a furry monster and get to work.
“We didn’t have many people walk out at the rude language in the West End,” Nigel says. “I think most people are aware what the show is all about.”
There is a tragic novella somewhere in the old puppeteer who can’t get cast in Avenue Q after a lifetime of playing with wooden Pinocchios, but Nigel is frank: “It is a show for a young cast. It can be demanding. We have to make the puppets as light as possible, but even then after two hours they can feel heavy.
“The good thing is that many of the cast come to this fresh and can be taught with a clean slate. It can be easier that way, if they have no preconceptions about how it should be done.”
A superfan Q-Head rang up the theatre from Dubai on Saturday and booked tickets. They won’t last long.
by RICHARD OSLEY
EVERYBODY’S a little bit racist, sometimes... So the creatures who live in Avenue Q will sing at you.
Big eyed like Elmo and Kermit, they look as cute as the smiley animals and monsters drawn from our summer holiday recollections of watching Sesame Street after Why Don’t You?
But these little guys have sharper tongues and watch more internet porn than Big Bird.
A cult fan-base will need no introduction, of course, to Trekkie Monster and his colleagues.
Their show ran successfully in the West End after being brought here from Broadway by Cameron Macintosh in 2006 and the groupies went back two, three, four, 20 times to see it over again.
Its success was slightly unexpected but in hindsight predictable. Puppets swearing, being lewd, might sound a bit old hat, but this is far detached from a 1970s ventriloquist, short on laughs and fresh from Blankety Blank, trying to embarrass an audience into laughs with eff words.
It’s not Emu grabbing at a man’s nutsack. It’s creative and, more importantly, funnier than that.
What’s new is that for the first time in the UK, the licensing of Avenue Q is out for the field, meaning it can be put on beyond the big theatres in central London.
And the first place it will be staged since coming on the open market is Upstairs At The Gatehouse in Highgate Village. Ahead of the game, ahead of what might be quite few installations of Avenue Q across the country with varying quality control, they’ve been working on their own ranks of puppets since January in preparation.
Nearly 30 of them, hand-stitched in the workshops of two creators who worked on the original run, Nigel Plaskitt and Paul Jomain, are nearly all set and the pair are understandably protective.
In the rehearsal rooms, nobody puts their hand up one (if it can be said less crudely, do write in) without cleansing in bacterial handwash. But then, all of a sudden, the puppets command your gaze. Interviews with their masters are strangely conducted while looking into their felt eyes.
Both Nigel and Paul have the Jim Henson Company on their CVs, as well as a host of other puppet productions such as the Johnny Vegas ad monkey, now working it for PG Tips. Nigel also worked on Spitting Image – “there’s often talk about bringing it back, but cost is the factor”.
There is a chat about the painstaking work which goes into making our new friends, and then comes the crushing blow from the pair: “The puppets only last for about two years and then there’s quite a bit of cannibalisation.”
So, those saucer-eyed faces who somehow are capable of generating more empathy than a “real actor” suffer from pretty speedy wear and tear and end up in a refuse pit, once all the best bits are taken for future projects. How sad! Not an industry for anybody who struggled to part with their childhood cuddlies.
To get a sense of that, one of the main stars of the show, put on here by the theatre’s boss John Plews, is made, not from some other-world fabric, but material initially meant to be an off-white bed throw.
Paul says: “Parts of the puppets can come from anywhere, but over the years I’ve developed an eye for what can work and what can’t, and where to get it.”
Nigel adds: “The show has no official connection with Sesame Street or the Muppets, other than a lot of people who have worked on it have some connection. I think they thought there was no point trying to stop the show from a legal point of view, especially when they saw how popular it was.
This wasn’t a show attacking Sesame Street or mocking it, more it was a show that showed how much affection people had for it. Its story is about real life.”
Avenue Q almost created a new style of its own. The characters do not fling up from behind sofas. Instead, no attempt is made to conceal those at the controls.
It works, and it means actors more used to singing and dancing in musicals are hired, learn the skills of working with a furry monster and get to work.
“We didn’t have many people walk out at the rude language in the West End,” Nigel says. “I think most people are aware what the show is all about.”
There is a tragic novella somewhere in the old puppeteer who can’t get cast in Avenue Q after a lifetime of playing with wooden Pinocchios, but Nigel is frank: “It is a show for a young cast. It can be demanding. We have to make the puppets as light as possible, but even then after two hours they can feel heavy.
“The good thing is that many of the cast come to this fresh and can be taught with a clean slate. It can be easier that way, if they have no preconceptions about how it should be done.”
A superfan Q-Head rang up the theatre from Dubai on Saturday and booked tickets. They won’t last long.
Avenue Q - Upstairs at the Gatehouse
Time Out - London
...Director John Plews’s production team boasts many ‘Avenue Q’ stalwarts, including puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt and puppet creator Paul Jomain. Such experienced hands lend the production real swagger and gloss.
West End Frame
...The puppets (designed by Paul Jomain) are quite spectacular...
Backstage Pass
...The puppets are amazingly detailed, made by Paul Jomain...
BroadwayBaby.com
...prime credit has to go to puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt. The cast perform as if they’d been puppeteers from childhood.
...Director John Plews’s production team boasts many ‘Avenue Q’ stalwarts, including puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt and puppet creator Paul Jomain. Such experienced hands lend the production real swagger and gloss.
West End Frame
...The puppets (designed by Paul Jomain) are quite spectacular...
Backstage Pass
...The puppets are amazingly detailed, made by Paul Jomain...
BroadwayBaby.com
...prime credit has to go to puppet consultant Nigel Plaskitt. The cast perform as if they’d been puppeteers from childhood.