Avenue Q - Why So Serious? 

        The Musical Avenue Q – Hong Kong (Translated as ''Q崎大道'' in Chinese) is adapted from the titled hit Broadway musical in 2003. It was produced and performed by members of local creative organization Windmill Grass Theatre. The lyrics and dialogues were translated from English into Cantonese. The show was firstly staged in the August 2013. Having received a round good response, the company staged another re-run of the musical in the April 2014. The session of performance I watched was on 15^th April 8p.m.

        Reasons I choose this show as my cultural text of the Online Review are that, firstly, stage drama is often being assumed as a minority in entertainment business. In fact, there are many genres and elements in stage drama too. It should not be neglected. Secondly, Avenue Q had won many awards and is widely renowned. Thirdly, I love theatres very much. The atmosphere and the live performance given by the actors are realistic and are often more powerful. The experience is very different comparing to neither cinemas nor concerts.

        Avenue Q is a comedy. The most significant characteristic of this show is that puppets are used as the main characters. Actors control them with hands during singing and dancing. The puppets look like the ones in the famous children programme the “Sesame Street”, only the story is not appropriate for minors because it contains mature materials for grown-ups.

        The story happens in the Avenue Q where various monsters and humans are living there. Princeton was a fresh graduate of university and rented an apartment there. He met some new human and monster neighbors. He also met his true love Kate Monster (a kindergarten assistant). These young adults are trying to face the problems of finding life purpose, racism, homosexuality, commitment of love and pursuit of dreams in a creative, slightly vulgar, hopeful and interesting way.

        It is never easy to translate the songs of a whole musical to another language; because they have different cultures and linguistic structures. Therefore, a technique called “acculturation” is often used by the translator and lyricist. One of the problems usually happened in translated shows is that the speakability and playability are lowered due to preservation of originals.

Instead of directly translating, they localize some ideas of the songs. This production had done a very good job in the modification and still be largely faithful to the source text. With the localized elements, the dialogues and lyrics are even more hilarious and resonating with the audience. The performability is very high.

There is a famous song of the show called “It suck to be me”. The Hong Kong one changed it into a local slang (“最仆街就係我”). I think it is particularly funny and such bluntness brought the black humour directly to us. The song after overture in the original was “What do you do with a BA in English”. In Hong Kong version, it is changed to a degree in Liberal Studies. Though seems a big change; they are all considered useless and jobless subjects in the sense of audience. Their message is clear in the final song. Life is full of misery. Live in the moment is the most important.

The directing is good. The music is beautiful. The setting, lighting and sound effect are very fine too. Actors especially did a great job not only in singing and dancing, but also controlling the puppets on stage. They had to puppeteer at least two characters and sang with the voice required for that puppet. It was impressive. They were very talented. Of all the characters, I like the Bad Idea Bears the most because just like the Ted from the titled movie, they are cute and the Trekkie Monster, though he likes porns, he has a golden heart. 

Overall, I enjoy the performance very much and it was a very good experience. I will strongly recommend it to others.

Reference:

Windmill Grass Theatre Official Website on Avenue Q – Hong Kong

http://www.wmgtheatre.com/#!newest/c22pp

 COMM2207 Media and Culture Industries in Hong Kong

Task: Online Review

Name: Poon Chun Wing

Student ID: 10491830 / 21236479