Track Listing

1. The Avenue Q Theme - Company
2. What Do You Do with a B.A. in English? - John Tartaglia
3. It Sucks To Be Me - Jordan Gelber, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia, Rick Lyon, Ann Harada, Natalie Venetia Belcon, Jennifer Barnhart
4. If You Were Gay - Rick Lyon with John Tartaglia
5. Purpose - John Tartaglia & Company
6. Everyone's A Little Bit Racist - John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Natalie Venetia Belcon, Jordan Gelber, Ann Harada
7. The Internet Is For Porn - Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Rick Lyon & the Guys
8. Mix Tape - Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia
9. I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today - Jordan Gelber with Ann Harada
10. Special - Stephanie D'Abruzzo with the Guys
11. You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love) - Natalie Venetia Belcon, Rick Lyon, Jennifer Barnhart & Ensemble with Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia, Jordan Gelber, Ann Harada
12. Come True - John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo with Rick Lyon
13. My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada - John Tartaglia
14. There's a Fine, Fine Line - Stephanie D'Abruzzo
15. There Is Life Outside Your Apartment - Jordan Gelber, John Tartaglia & Company
16. The More You Ruv Someone - Ann Harada, Stephanie D'Abruzzo
17. Schadenfreude - Natalie Venetia Belcon, Rick Lyon
18. I Wish I Could Go Back to College - Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Rick Lyon, John Tartaglia
19. The Money Song - Rick Lyon, John Tartaglia, Natalie Venetia Belcon with Jordan Gelber, Ann Harada, Jennifer Barnhart
20. School for Monsters/The Money Song (Reprise) - Rick Lyon & Company
21. There's A Fine, Fine Line (Reprise) - John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo with Ann Harada
22. What Do You Do With A B.A. In English? (Reprise) - Rick Lyon with Natalie Venetia Belcon, John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Jordan Gelber & Jennifer Barnhart
23. For Now - Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Jordan Gelber, Natalie Venetia Belcon, Ann Harada, Rick Lyon, John Tartaglia, Jennifer Barnhart

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #710 in Music
• Released on: 2003-10-07
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Cast Recording, Explicit Lyrics

Amazon.com
Avenue Q will only fuel the frustration of those who think that Broadway has given up on sophisticated entertainment geared to adults. "Whatever happened to Cole Porter's witty rhymes and mature subject matter?" they'll say. Well, it's hard to deny that Avenue Q's main frame of reference is Sesame Street and that its humor can be very broad--yes, there's profanity and puppet sex. But the show also displays heart ("The More You Ruv Someone" typically begins with "Why can't people get along?") and a pretty satisfying zany streak. Musically, the score is rooted in 1970s pop, with nods to the aforementioned Sesame Street. The excellent cast, dominated by John Tartaglia and Stephanie D'Abruzzo, does it justice, milking the humorous numbers for all they're worth and finding pathos in the more straightforward ones. Not bad for a childish show. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

Customer Reviews

Hysterically Funny
Avenue Q is hilarious. It's definitely deserving of it's praise. I saw it when it came into town. Definitely not for the kids, but neither are R rated movies.

Clever, limited, gimmicky script. Super talented cast.
I just saw the touring company. VERY talented cast! I thought that the concept of the show was a great idea, I couldn't help but feel that the writers weren't skilled enough to bring the show to its full potential. The program struck me as an exuberant performance of a sitcom-level script. Rather than reach for the second, third or fourth word, punchline or plot twist, the writers seemed to stop with the first one that entered their minds. (Sheltered suburban writers contriving something for a sheltered suburban audience in an effort to push the proverbial envelope and merit that vague descriptor 'edgy.') The end result, I felt, was a lineup of stereotypical characters, a series of juvenile wisecracks (with some smug raunchiness tossed in for effect) and a pre-digested series of truisms used as a replacement for actual character or plot arc. The score was filled with palatable, but totally forgettable songs. The show was clever, but never went beyond the gimmicky or obvious. The talented cast in the touring company, however, were worth the price of admission. Their performances were extraordinary. Nobody but a remarkably talented and resourceful cast could pull this off.

Is it perfect? No. Do I absolutely love it? YES!!!
First, I'll tell you all about the weaknessess.

Puerile? Yep. And I don't care much for puerile. I especially hate bathroom humor. Cliched? Yes it is, in many places. Self-pitying? Yeah, my generation has kind of perfected self-pity, haven't we? So yes, I am well aware that this is not perfection. However...

Oh my God, I LOVE this!!! I love this passonately. I am just the right age to have watched Sesame Street fanatically through my entire early childhood (there was no cable in the city I grew up in until I was 14...Philly got cable VERY late). The songs have a sound sort of like songs I remember Sesame Street characters singing, but bigger.

This is why with everything in Avenue Q that I didn't like, I'll give it five stars and recommend it to anyone that will listen: For all of the puerile humor, the cliches, for all of the assumed irony and even cynicism, there is genuine warmth in Avenue Q. This show actually loves it's stumbing along, trying-to-figure-out-how-life-is-supposed-to-work characters. Avenue Q, at it's heart, has no real cynicisim. If you're a member of a generation that truly (for the most part) has no desire to emulate its parents (Which part shall we reject first? The divorces? The materialism? The custody issues?), you kind of have no model to build your life on. If this is you, you have to find your own way and make your own rules. Avenue Q captures what this feels like better than anything else I've ever seen.