Theatre review: Avenue Q

After Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx (both contributing music and lyrics) and Jeff Whitty's (book) Avenue Q closed (for the third time) its original West End production, my favourite musical didn't stay away too long, with smaller-scale productions and tours meaning I and a group of similarly addicted friends could keep getting our live fix. It's been away for a few years though, meaning what I think is my fourteenth time seeing it live is in fact a 20th-anniversary production of it opening at the Noël Coward (the first show to play there after the theatre had been renamed.) Now at a reduced-capacity Shaftesbury Theatre while its upper level is being repaired, original director Jason Moore returns for a show that was always being tweaked to keep up with the times, and has now had a few extra rewrites to bring it into 2026.But not too many, as this is definitely a show that wasn't broke and didn't need fixing: You know the drill, it's Sesame Street's mix of real humans, puppet humans and…