'Muppet geek' is far from Sesame Street

Avenue Q

, opening tonight at the Forrest Theatre, is a rather unusual Broadway musical, so it's perfectly fitting that its lead puppeteer, Rob McClure, is - at 25 - already a rather unusual actor.

McClure first garnered notice at the 2006 Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival in the community-theater spoof Austentatious. A year later - and just two years after moving from North Jersey to South Philly - he won the 2007 Barrymore Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical for his hip-hop Antipholus of Syracuse in 11th Hour Theater Company's The Bomb-itty of Errors.

In between, well, he was on Broadway.

Auditioning for Avenue Q in October 2006, he arrived prepared with a pop song. But after listening to a slew of other hopefuls indulging their own American Idol fantasies, he turned on a dime and sang Cole Porter's "De-Lovely" as a duet between Ernie and Cookie Monster, bagging himself a Broadway part as a dirty puppet.

Now the self-described "huge Muppet geek" finds himself back in Q on its national tour, engaging in nightly onstage puppet sex, occasionally even with his girlfriend, fellow cast member and Philadelphia actress Maggie Lakis.

On Broadway, McClure played both Nicky - the straight Ernie to roommate Rod's trapped-in-the-closet Bert (guess those rumors were true after all) - and Trekkie, a Cookie Monster-style puppet who, instead of suffering an addiction to cookies, dreams all day about, well, let's just say it lives on the Internet and rhymes with horn.

This time around, he has hopped the fence to take on the roles of Rod and of Princeton, the hapless young hero of Q who has a B.A. in English and a long, disappointing road ahead of him.

For her part, 29-year-old Temple grad Lakis - so much a hometown girl that her parents spent their first date at Pine Street's legendary dive bar Dirty Frank's - joins the cast here as part of the ensemble and an understudy for Kate Monster, the object of Princeton's ambivalent affections.

Lakis first found herself working a puppet in the Arden's production of The BFG, adapted from Roald Dahl's children's tale The BFG (Big Friendly Giant), at roughly the same time McClure was first cast in Avenue Q, which made for some interesting contrasts. She swears that whether puppets are aimed at children or adults, "the same principles go into it.

"With kids, you're in a teaching frame of mind, and in Avenue Q they're teaching lessons, but to adults."

McClure is a bit less high-minded about the process, noting that "when I was first learning [the roles] for Broadway, I'd come home and practice things she thought were just so bizarre."

When Lakis also was cast in the touring company, things got stranger.

"Our director," McClure says, "has a strict rule that the relationships onstage are puppet-to-puppet. Even the people in the show who play people are looking at our puppet, so I'm never making eye contact with anyone."

That's also one aspect of the production that pleases Lakis, he says, laughing: "She's happy that we get to do a show where I do a sex scene every night and the only thing that touches a girl is my forearm."

Though Lakis had worked with Mum Puppettheatre's renowned Aaron Cromie on The BFG, puppetry was an entirely new and eye-opening experience for McClure.

"I'll never forget when I first saw it," he recalls. "Aymee Garcia, who worked for PBS, was my teacher in puppet camp" - part of the audition process - "and she said, 'OK, step one: Make sure I can see the puppet inhale before he speaks.' It was amazing watching the difference in the mirror and the things the audience takes for granted to make the puppet come alive!"

McClure also says that playwrights Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx chose to show the puppeteers, rather than hide them, because revealing the humans behind the felt and googly eyes "adds a dimension to the puppet's success."

Now that the tour has brought him back, McClure marvels at his adopted city's ever-more-vibrant theater scene, calling it a "nurturing and charming environment for a new artist."

He cites a key difference between Philadelphia and Broadway audiences: "In Philadelphia, they're expecting more. [In New York] they're dealing with such a huge tourist market . . . but here it's OK if audiences have never heard of the show - the theaters have established themselves and people trust the artists. It's that sense of community that works."

When the Avenue Q tour ends next summer, McClure and Lakis will return to Philadelphia - McClure with a different perspective. Months spent defiling puppets every day has led to a loss of innocence; he admits happily, "I can't watch Sesame Street the same way anymore."

By the time the curtain comes down on Q on Feb. 10, he's betting plenty of Philadelphians will agree.

The "Avenue Q" crew learns how to order a Philly cheesesteak. Video at http://go.philly.com/AvenueQ.EndText