IF YOU’RE staging a tour involving puppets then these are the ideal characters to help you sell tickets. Right? Wrong, says David Hutchinson, who hadn’t considered the impact of taking the Trekkie Monster from Avenue Q to Carlisle and Sunderland.

“We drove down from Scotland to visit a few venues and brought the Trekkie Monster with me and I can’t even tell you the reaction I got when I stopped at landmark sites on the way. The puppets are so colourful that people just want to touch them and I had little children gathering around and asking, ‘Who’s he?’ and I has to reply ‘I can’t tell you’ because I suddenly realised this wasn’t going to be appropriate,

“It was a fatal mistake because the whole idea stands on its head when you understand that Avenue Q is an adult show,” explains Hutchinson who was keen to avoid a conversation with youngsters about the hairy internet sexpert which he had on his arm.

“Oh my gosh, I knew that the Trekkie Monster just watches the internet for porn. Then the guys from the Carlisle theatre said, ‘We really have to move away from these kids because they might just turn up to see the show,” he says.

Avenue Q is being sold to a 14-plus audience with the more conservative Scottish theatres raising the age level to 16. This could be that some people are all too ready to complain and threaten legal action these days.

“We did a show in the West End called Seussical The Musical based on Dr Seuss and one of the characters had a skirt which was just above the knee. I had a complaint from a mum saying that the show was raunchy and we’d been through the show looking for risk assessments. I thought the complaint was a bit extreme and I didn’t quite know what to say to the mother, but I decided to give her the cost of her tickets back rather than argue. Believe it or not, the actress involved is now in Avenue Q,” Hutchinson says with a laugh.

“We took the show on because it is a Tony Award-winning musical on Broadway and previous tours have gone to major UK theatres. It also plays well to our remit of working with young adults and engaging them in the arts, and this is a feelgood musical within their demographic,” he says.

The puppets designed by Paul Jomain do have a visual link with TV’s famous Sesame Street and Hutchinson’s Sell a Door Theatre Company felt that this was a re-birth for an older generation. After being a hit in the US, with a creative team also responsible for TV’s South Park and hit show The Book Of Mormon, and then the UK, Hutchinson feels the show has aged really well since its launch in 2003.

“The feedback we’ve been getting is that Avenue Q still hits the right spot,” he says about a show where the audience can see the cast members operating the puppets as they sing comedy songs like The Internet is for Porn and Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist. Aimed at the point in life where students discover the world isn’t fair as they attempt to find their purpose in life and come to terms with their sexuality, Hutchinson agrees that many young adults “are floating along on a student loan and going out and having a good time, when bam the real world comes in”.

He points to number of graduates who have good degrees and no jobs – although that has always been the case in performing arts and drama schools where there are many talented people and few jobs. “It’s a reality in all walks of life, which is why scenes in Avenue Q, although they are in a light-hearted manner, really do hit home,” Hutchinson says.

Following UK tours in 2011 and 2012, Sell a Door decided to revive the Robert Perez-Jeff Marx musical after an April launch in London before bringing a tour to Wearside next month. “It is a new team in term of actors and director but out attitude towards the show was ‘if it ain’t broke why fix it?’. It’s not a carbon copy of anyone else’s work but the actual material is great and I didn’t see why we should change. We do adapt things. We are adapting Jeykll and Hyde at the moment and trying to making it relevant to the audience. One of the question marks was should we keep the accent American? Again, it is so American that we would have had to get out from under the script to make it work. Some of the characters are quintessentially American and we knew the show had a solid fan base who which Cameron Macintosh built by taking the risk of putting on the UK version in the first place,” says Hutchinson.

Publicity for Avenue Q has focused on the more brash aspects of college graduate Princeton, kindergarten teaching assistant Kate Monster, Republican banker Rob, struggling comic Brian and his Japanese fiancée Christmas Eve, building supervisor Gary Coleman and that unmentionable monster.

“I don’t think that people can make the mistake of thinking this is another Sesame Street. It’s not been a problem so far and a lot of theatres are so excited because we’ve included some small venues,” says Hutchinson.

Not so Sunderland, the biggest stage for Avenue Q and a theatre will special importance for Hutchinson. “It’s interesting because my parents are from Sunderland and my co-producer has parents from Northumberland. I remember going to Whitburn and seeing the Airshow and my family keep asking when my company is bringing a show to the North-East.

“Finally, I’m bringing a show to where the bulk of my family live and it is really exciting. Believe it or not I didn’t see Avenue Q when it toured to Newcastle, or even in the UK. The first time I saw it was in the US. I was over there on an exchange trip with my university, Lipa of Liverpool. What will be nice for us is to have a show which will allow the chance for 1,000 people to come along and just laugh,” says Hutchinson.

n Avenue Q tours to Sunderland Empire during the week of July 14-16. Box Office: 0844-871-3022 or ATGtickets.com/Sunderland