8 things you might not know about Avenue Q

Avenue Q gives its final performance at the Shaftesbury Theatre on Sunday 3 January 2027, closing a 20th-anniversary season that began previews on 20 March 2026. That leaves about two months to visit the street. Here is what sits behind the show.

1. It started with a song for Kermit

Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx met in a songwriting class at the BMI Workshop. Their first joint project was a batch of songs for Kermit, Prince of Denmark, an imagined Muppet version of Hamlet. To present one in class, they asked puppeteer Rick Lyon to perform it. He sat on a stool with a Kermit replica, in full view of the room. The Henson family turned the idea down. The way Lyon performed it stuck.

2. It was meant for television

The pair's next idea was a street of their own puppets, a grown-up take on Sesame Street, planned as a TV series. A public reading for potential backers in 2000 changed course. Producers Robyn Goodman and Jeffrey Seller saw a stage show in it. One early song, a parody called How Much Do the People in Your Neighborhood Make?, was cut once the TV format was dropped.

3. Its first puppeteers came from Sesame Street

The parody goes deeper than the look. Marx interned on Sesame Street early in his career, and all four principal puppeteers in the original company, John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Jennifer Barnhart and Rick Lyon, had performed on the programme. Roommates Rod and Nicky owe a fair amount to Bert and Ernie, and Trekkie Monster will remind some of Cookie Monster.

4. You are meant to see the puppeteers

Nobody hides behind a wall. The puppeteers work in plain sight, dressed in plain grey so the colour stays with the puppets and the human characters, who never acknowledge them. A puppet can pass from one performer to another between scenes, and the voice is not always coming from the person holding it.

5. It beat Wicked to Best Musical

The show opened Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre on 20 March 2003 and moved to the John Golden Theatre on Broadway, opening there on 31 July 2003. At the 2004 Tony Awards it won Best Musical from a field that included Wicked. It took three awards from six nominations: Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical for Jeff Whitty and Best Original Score for Lopez and Marx.

6. One of its writers has won the EGOT twice

Robert Lopez went on to co-create The Book of Mormon with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and to write the songs for Disney's Frozen, Frozen 2 and Coco with Kristen Anderson-Lopez. He is one of the few people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, and the only one to have won all four more than once.

7. London's first run took five years and three theatres

The original West End production, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, opened at the Noël Coward Theatre in 2006. It reopened at the Gielgud Theatre in June 2009, moved to Wyndham's Theatre in March 2010 and closed there on 30 October 2010. London made a few changes of its own. Gary Coleman, the building's superintendent and a role usually played by a woman, was played by a man.

8. This season brought the originals back

The Shaftesbury production travelled with the original Broadway puppets, designed by Rick Lyon, and is directed by Jason Moore, who staged the first Broadway production. On 17 September, five West End alumni, Julie Atherton, Ann Harada, Siôn Lloyd, Jon Robyns and Giles Terera, joined the company for a one-night anniversary performance. Atherton, who played Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut in the original London company, is the production's associate director.

The finale, For Now, is also out as a short clip, and the song's point fits the season: nothing on the street lasts. Once the puppets leave, the building takes a new name and becomes the Judi Dench Theatre in February 2027.

Avenue Q is booking at the Shaftesbury Theatre until Sunday 3 January 2027.