thekua.com@rest

Last night I saw the musical Avenue Q, the show most well known as described as Sesame Street with adult themes. This musical had shown on Broadway for the last six months, has been on preview in the West End for the last three weeks and this week marked its first official showings. If you have never seen Jim Jimson puppetry live, the experience is completely worth it, and even though there are people manning puppets on stage, you slowly stop noticing the people as they take on the same character they are puppeteering.

The show is done in true Sesame Street style with the entire show about self discovery and purpose in life and even with “Idea!” screens popping up describing keywords in cartoonish manners. Unlike Sesame Street though it tackles some issues you would never see such as sexual orientation, internet porn and racism.

I was extremely impressed by the lead puppeteers with many of the actors playing multiple characters and having the difficult chore of singing in multiple voices as well as acting them out. Their body language shined and fit well with the subtle body language of each of the puppets. I really enjoyed the light heartedness of the entire play though parts of it were definitely not something you could bring kids to.

Thekua.com Rating: 8 out of 10

Comments(0)

From Carlos: “[anything] sucks, but it doesn’t have to!”

Comments(1)

On Saturday I spent the entire day walking around the town of Windsor, one of the places to go and visit the Queen. According to the flag that was flying on top of the round tower, we were also lucky enough that the Queen was in, though we didn’t get a chance to see her.

Windsor castle is stunning and its entry price reasonable considering you get an audio tour and walking tour included. The gardens are stunningly kept and guards decked out in big tall black hats bright red uniforms tromp continuously throughout the grounds. The castle has a very long history, once a wooden fortress strategically placed atop a very big hill, now built up significantly into a series of stone buildings and churches. I found it fascinating to see all of the historical artefacts related to generations of knights, kings and queens all throughout the visit.

Being quite warm and summery we decided to take a slow boat cruise around the Thames where we saw the Windsor racecourse, one of two island racecourses and the only one with its own marina in England. It was a great day and many other people thought the same, as indicated by the large number of boats moored to the side of the river (and sometimes to each other). Plenty of people were picnicking, swimming or just sunning themselves excessively red raw. We finished off the day by visiting Eton college a brief walk away, most famous as the preferred institute of education for the Royal family. Check out more pictures in the gallery.

Comments(2)

The last two weeks finally caught up with me midweek, and though I managed to recover from it with a record twelve or so hours sleep in, I think I’m still in recovery mode. Due to this, Tuesday was my last night out this week where I spent it watching The Rakes perform at the Islington Academy. They are yet another awesome British rock band - part punk, part indie and part alternative. Their lyrics are simple, entertaining and extremely catchy. Definitely check out their latest album Capture Release if you can, or better yet, see them live if you can find any tickets to their ever-popular gigs.

I had never been to the Islington Academy before, and I was quite impressed as it was a good sized venue (not too large) and had air-conditioning to boot! Admittedly the venue was probably not as full as it could have been, but I was thankful it wasn’t on our particular night. The Rakes definitely filled the venue that night and put on a performance that pleased the crowd, and the best part about the night was that it was free because it had been sponsored by Converse – bargain!

Comments(1)