I WAS thrilled when I saw Avenue Q was coming back to Westcliff – what’s not to love about sometimes cute and often crazy puppets singing songs such as the Internet is for Porn and Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist?

Avenue Q is a Tony award-winning musical about finding your purpose in life, with the world’s naughtiest puppets brought hilariously to life by a company of performers.

When you know it is from the same man who created the current West End smash the Book of Mormon and co-wrote the songs in Disney’s Frozen, you know it is going to be un-PC and you’ll be humming numbers for days… Our hero is Princeton, a bright-eyed graduate who comes to NewYorkwith big dreams and a tiny bank account.

Soon discovering the only neighbourhood he can afford is Avenue Q, he finds himself moving in with some quirky characters.

They include Brian the out-of-work comedian and his therapist fiancee Christmas Eve; Nicky the goodhearted slacker and his closet gay banker roommate Rod, an internet “sexpert”called Trekkie Monster and a cute kindergarten teacher named KateMonster. My favourites are Lucy the Slut and the Bad Ideas Bears.

Totally randomly, the building’s superintendent is meant to be Different Strokes’ actor Gary Coleman!

It’s weird at first watching a show where it is people holding puppets on stage – who do you look at? At first you cannot help watching the operators, but about ten minutes in you are drawn in by the puppets themselves and by the time it’s the interval you realise you’ve barely been looking at the actors.

Every member of the ensemble cast is faultless, putting everything they’ve got into the tricky job of singing perfectly and manipulating a puppet – in some cases moving from character to character in mere moments, and every single one of them making the audience chuckle.

I would like to tell you some of the funniest gags, but this is a show branded “not suitable for little monsters” for good reason, so I will refrain!

The only things that slightly let down the show were technical – in some places the backing music was too loud and you could not hear the words of the songs, and sometimes the follow spot operator needed to keep up with the actor and not leave them in the dark. But that’s just me being a bit picky when, frankly, this show is a joy .

Avenue Q is at the Palace Theatre, in Westcliff, until Saturday – you’d be a muppet to miss it…

TRACY JONES