If you’re looking for something to do this weekend in Minneapolis, you should do like I did last night and check out the musical Avenue Q at the Mixed Blood Theater. Avenue Q won kudos on Broadway for its story about humans and puppets struggling to make something of themselves. It’s an adult-themed version of Sesame Street where everyone struggles with dating, money, and the ordinary disappointments of adulthood while belting out catchy numbers about casual racism, being gay, and (my favorite) schadenfreude. The Mixed Blood cast is uniformly great, both as actors and singers. Mixed Blood is a lot smaller than Broadway venues, but that intimacy imbues the actors and their puppets with a kind of genuineness that might seem forced on a big stage. The whole production is great fun and it should give Mixed Blood some well-deserved recognition as a theater company that can bring big, vibrant spectacle to a small stage.
