When Cecilia was here last week I wanted to take her to the best tourist attractions and ensure she had a spectacular visit to London, as any good hostess would. Since she is in her last year at college, and I'm currently unemployed, we needed to get the best bang for our buck... eh... punch for our pound?
A lot of the tourist activities in London are just plain tourist traps. They'll frisk you like a very good pick pocket, and you'll leave the city feeling robbed of all your money and a little of your dignity. I try to skip these traps, especially because many things are free here - but man, the things that aren't free will sure cost you.
There is one touristy thing I always recommend though, and that is going to the theater. There are tons of shows in London, and Leicester Square is host to plenty of half price ticket booths. This is an ideal place to pick up tickets the same day or a few days before a show, especially if you're not super picky.
Like a good hostess, I told Cecilia that she could pick the show. Of course, I didn't actually mean this, because I'd already seen most the ones I wanted to see. So she went through the gauntlet of shows and I kept saying, "seen it." That is until she said Avenue Q. I hadn't seen this one, nor had I heard anything about it, except for all the advertisements which said it was "pant-wettingly funny". I had wanted to see it for awhile, mostly because of it's self-proclaimed hilarity, but I was kind of embarassed by this because the show is done with Muppets.
So we went to my favorite half-price booth and we managed to score tickets for a mere £15 each.
Then when we arrived at the show the next day, they upgraded our seats! Little did we know we were about to enjoy the most hilarious piece of Muppet theater ever...
Imagine if you will, the genius that is The Labyrinth, combined with Sesame Street, only this show addresses adult topics. I felt I could particularly relate to the main character, who felt so sure that he would do very well after his graduation, however, he soon finds out that his BA in English is pretty much useless. There was a bunch of musical numbers that really got the audience going such as, "It's OK if you're Gay" - done by two male muppets whose relationship resembles that of Bert and Ernie. This show certainly wasn't afraid of adressing taboo topics, however, by doing it with hand puppets, statements that would generally be offensive were transformed into words of true comic genius. For example, the Avenue Q crew comes to the realization that "everyone's a little bit racist" and of course they burst into a song that addresses this fact. If the idea of puppets discussing politically incorrect topics appeals to you, then you really must see this show.
There is one downside to this show - I found myself getting pretty perturbed at my fellow audience members. They kept laughing! I mean, what good is a comedy if you can't hear the next joke because everyone is laughing too hard? Don't answer that.
The moral of the story is - never be embarrassed of your love of Muppets and when given the opportunity go see Avenue Q!
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