If you learned to count, spell and behave in society from a steady childhood diet of Sesame St, but have felt lost ever since, never fear – Avenue Q is here to teach you about the adult world. The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical is currently on stage at the Civic Theatre in Auckland. Set on the down-and-out New York City street Avenue Q, it uses both human and puppet characters to teach the audience a thing or two about the real world. These life lessons include the following: the internet is for porn, apparently everyone's a little bit racist and it's ok to be gay. The Sesame St parallels are rampant. Roommates Rod and Nicky are clearly based on the bromance of Bert and Ernie; Rod is a closeted Republican and his straight buddy Nicky is trying to help him deal with his sexuality. There is also the hilarious Trekkie Monster, whose passion for porn is as powerful as Cookie Monster's addiction to biscuits. Unlike Sesame St, there is sex and swearing. So don't take your sister's kid to this show. It's for grown-ups. The storyline is centred on college graduate Princeton, who has realised he actually has no purpose in life and goes about looking for it, with the help of the friendly residents of Avenue Q. He is followed around by a pair of Care Bear-inspired 'Bad Idea Bears' who make it their mission to make him mess up. What follows is a series of mistakes and resulting lessons, chiefly expressed through song. The skill of the cast is phenomenal. One female puppeteer manages to voice both a kindergarten teacher and the local goodtime girl as they hold down a conversation, while Japanese character Christmas Eve will blow your away with her giant voice when she belts out the tune The More You Ruv Someone. It will make you laugh out loud, multiple times, but Avenue Q is also very heavy on lessons and gets rather serious at points. It's not particularly deep, but it is very, very American - in a sarcastic self-help book kind of way. Avenue Q is incredibly catchy, incredibly cheesy and incredibly tongue in cheek. But be warned: multi-positional puppet sex is one of those bizarrely hilarious images that is likely to stay burned in your brain for some time. For ticket information, click here Check out the song If You Were Gay in the YouTube clip below. Kitten Power - 14th May 2010