The Muppet man who lives on Avenue Q

We are in the rehearsal land of Avenue Q, the award-winning puppet show which is strictly for adults – well, over-14s at the very least – and returning to tour other parts of the North-East where even the Muppets and Seasame Street fear to tread.

Any further introduction has to be put on hold because the party of journalists invited to inspect the launch of a tour which takes in Darlington Civic Theatre has to come to terms with the company’s puppetry coach Nigel Plaskitt having a pedigree starting with The Muppet Christmas Carol and taking in Spitting Image and the voice of a re-animated Captain Black, from the 2005 Captain Scarlet, along the way.

“David Lane, who was the director of Captain Scarlet, had worked with me on The Muppet Treasure Island and when he came to do the remake of Captain Scarlet he said, ‘How about trying out for one of the voices?’ He didn’t say which particular voice and I turned up at the audition in a sound studio and we did some tests. I read for Black, and Gerry Anderson, who was listening, came out and asked if I’d like to play the role. He listened in the booth because he didn’t want to see what I looked like,” says Plaskitt. Anderson, famously, liked to choose a voice for a character rather than be influenced by someone’s appearance.

“He always auditioned without seeing the actor and I had a ball doing the series. We shot it over two years and, probably, every two months we’d go in and do a session which recorded two or three programmes in one go. The animators worked on it from there and the rest of the cast were fantastic,” he says.

Plaiskitt recalls watching the original puppet series, starring the voice of the late Francis Matthews, and points out that Captain Black didn’t speak in the 1967 version.

“I think Captain Black only had two or three words in the whole thing. He was like a kind of zombie, but Gerry Anderson wanted something more dramatic. In the first episode, Captains Black and Scarlet were on a mission and were attacked by the Mysterons. Unfortunately, Captain Black wasn’t able to break free and carried on being the villain. Occasionally, the good part would try to break free and it was a really interesting part to play,” says the puppeteer who is hoping that a successful return on Saturday nights for Thunderbirds might herald more Scarlet days for his Captain Black.

Plaskitt has a long track record of making puppet projects aimed at children, but feels he was able to stop worrying about upsetting younger viewers thanks to the success of Spitting Image. “I spent 13 years on Spitting Image and it gave me a good background in being free with what we could do. So, when it came to Avenue Q I didn’t have sense of ‘I shouldn’t be doing that’. I operated most of the Royal family at one point, and played Margaret Thatcher and operated John Major in most of his puppet’s scenes. That brought me on to a job I do now, and that’s playing the PG Tips monkey. Ben Miller does the voice, but the job offer was down to Spitting Image,” he says.

The charismatic advert also stars Johnny Vegas and Plaskitt got to know the North-West stand-up so well that he discovered that comedy isn’t his co-stars first love.

“A lot of people don’t know that Johnny’s passion is ceramics. That’s what he studied to do and he has his own studio,” he says.

While he’s there as coach to the cast of Avenue Q, Plaiskitt confesses he wouldn’t like to be part of a two-hour stage show where the actor-puppeteers require regular bouts of physio to get them through the pain of operating furry characters for hours of rehearsal and shows.

“Although I do the techniques it’s the stamina that you require, particularly the two leads Princeton and Kate, who have huge lengths of time to perform. Sometimes it’s 30 to 35 minutes in one go. Although they will make it look easy when you see the show, at this stage of rehearsal it’s quite painful because they are having to change their muscles over to this slightly strange position of operating a puppet,” Plaiskitt says.

He became a puppeteer in the 1980s with the Jim Henson Company and worked on muppet movies from Labyrinth onwards.

“My favourite is The Muppet Christmas Carol and is often quoted by educators as the most complete version of the story. It was great fun to work on, but shot throughout a really hot summer when we could really have done with a bit of snow,” says Plaskitt, who recalls doing crowd scenes and bringing Animal to life.

“Like Avenue Q, most of the Muppet main puppeteers operate more than one character. So, if they had two on screen at the same time I would double. While Eric (Jacobson) was doing Miss Piggy, for example, I would be doing Animal. It’s that kind of thing I do most. I recall a whole sequence where I was part of the mice clearing up Mr Scrooge’s office,” he says.

He would later train the puppeteers on the European tour of Seasame Street and was recommended to launch Avenue Q in the West End in 2006.

“It was fantastic, but nobody had any idea how it would play here and Cameron Mackintosh, who brought it in, expected it to last maybe six months at most and it ran for four-and-a-half years. We were very lucky. It hasn’t really stopped. It’s been on the road since it came off the West End and doing lots of good business.”

Does he have a favourite puppet? “There are quite a few. There was a character called Hartley Hare, who I did for nine years. Then, probably, John Major and the Monkey. I also do someone called Mousey Mouse in Mopatops Shop (a CITV series from 1999) and that was great fun because there was something like 200 characters involved. One day I’ll get a proper job,” says the 65-year-old.

* Darlington Civic Theatre, June 9 to June 13. Box Office: 01325-486555 darlingtoncivic.co.uk

* York Grand Opera House, September 15 to September 19. Box Office: 0844-871-3024 or atgtickets.com/york