‘Avenue Q’ plays its hand in Sin City

Has Vegas spoiled “Avenue Q?” That was the make-or-break question as the irreverent 2004 Tony-winning musical inaugurated its second home this week at the lavish Wynn Las Vegas resort. Because the Wynn, by exclusive arrangement, is the only venue outside of Broadway where audiences can see the show in the foreseeable future, the stakes are huge.

Despite “Avenue Q’s” abundant hip sarcasm and raunchy antics (it’s amazing how suggestive characters can be that exist only from the waist up), its frequently applied label as an “adult ‘Sesame Street’ parody” is misleading: The show’s underlying appeal is one of tender-hearted innocence, hardly a natural fit for Sin City.

The good news is that within the confines of its specially built theater at the Wynn, “Avenue Q” retains the simple charm that made it a runaway Broadway hit. The faux-educational songs in which goofy, lovable puppets and the onstage actors grapple with life lessons about racism, poverty and sexuality brilliantly play fantasy against gritty reality.

Co-creators Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx have nothing but wide-eyed affection for their characters’ fuzzy forebears in the late Jim Henson’s whimsical “Sesame Street” creations. In concert with Jeff Whitty’s snappy book, the show unabashedly taps a widely shared nostalgia for Children’s Television Workshop programs, as well as the ambivalence about growing up that most of us never outgrow.

This newly transplanted “Avenue Q’s” authenticity is furthered by the presence of singer-actor-puppeteer John Tartaglia, the “Sesame Street” veteran who helped create two pivotal roles, and Rick Lyon, who designed and built the show’s puppets and mans several supporting characters.

The demanding schedule of two performances nightly necessitates the use of dual casts, which prove impressively uniform in performance quality -- no mean feat given the specialized skills required of the onstage puppeteers, who mirror the expressions and body language of their characters. Audiences won’t be shorted with either set of actors, but there are variations in shading.

Predictably, Tartaglia flawlessly evokes the uncertainties facing his puppet characters: Rod, an uptight, closeted gay Republican investment banker, and naive college grad Princeton, who finds himself adrift in a scary new world of career choices and romantic commitments. Alternate Jonathan Root, more than holds his own, however, nailing both roles’ vocal characterizations and gestures.

The biggest performance divergence is in Princeton’s love interest, Kate Monster. In interpreting the role, Brynn O’Malley and Kelli Sawyer play to their respective strengths. Though O’Malley’s singing voice is stunning, her broad acting style is geared more toward a bigger stage presentation, and her puppetry skills are less developed and nuanced than her counterpart’s.

Lyon animates his puppet creations with a joyful grace and fluidity that David Benoit comes very close to matching.

Of the human characters, the unemployed comedian (Cole Porter, Nicholas Kohn) and his Japanese therapist fiancee (Natalie Gray, Angela Ai) are close matches. Haneefah Wood mines a little more fun than Tonya Dixon out of the down-at-the-heels neighborhood super, Gary Coleman -- a poster child for adult failure.

The production is virtually unchanged from its Broadway origins. A few New York-centric lines have been swapped for local references, and the “instructional” cartoons appear on larger projector screens instead of plasma monitors -- a concession to seating capacity increased from 796 to 1,200.

As the name implies, the Wynn’s Broadway Theatre aspires to the stature of the Great White Way, and generally succeeds, with the glaring lapse of letting patrons bring intrusively aromatic popcorn from the concession bar back to their seats. Acoustics and sight lines are excellent, but with a small-scale show like this there are intimacy issues in the rear sections. The extra 11 bucks for an orchestra seat up close is money well spent.