Admit it, at one point in your life you sang along with the Sesame Street ensemble and probably learnt the ABC’s and 123′s of the fundamentals of elementary school education with Maria, Ernie and Cookie Monster.

Last night, Monette and I had a face to face encounter with our familiar furry friends of yesteryear’s television. Not exactly Elmo, Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, but incarnations of the puppets we love. It’s just that this time, they are not talking about counting numbers nor colors of the rainbow, but of sex, sexuality, masturbation, racism, stereotyping, porn and life’s purpose. I know, it’s politically incorrect in so many ways yet it’s hard-hitting truth made it, well, amazingly funny.

Pretty heavy huh? NOT… they actually relayed the message through a funny, witty and reality-knocking script and a master-crafted musical score with a nostalgic melodies from the infamous children show.

Rachel Alejandro, Felix Rivera, Calvin Millado, Frenchie Dy, Aiza Siguerra, Joel Trinidad and Thea Tadiar nailed the performance for the third Manila staging of this Broadway musical. The play is about an outrageously funny bunch of human-puppet neighborhood in a not so fabulous side of residential New york.

Avenue Q is definitely not for kids, unless you qualify GP as something that contains pottymouth and puppets having sex on stage then go ahead, tag your your kids along to the RCBC Theater. It’s like seeing a grown-up and totally uncensored Sesame Street or Batibot. Such a treat for someone like me who spent the formative years learning the alphabet and basic social skills from a morning children TV show.

Here’s a clip from the Broadway cast.

Whenever we travel–Arts, music and theater are the few indulgences that we really don’t mind splurging on, simply because we’re huge fans. Fan to a point that in the middle of every show, we were restraining ourselves from bursting into a song. In the case of Avenue Q, we were humming along while laughing all throughout the play… and feeling guilty that we are actually laughing.

“so grab your d**k and double click for porn! porn! porn!”

Photos from philippines.broadwayworld.com and video clip from franko3110