3.5 stars

DENVER -- Kids say the darnedest things. In "Avenue Q," that applies to puppets.

The musical that looks like "Sesame Street," feels like Barney, sounds like Broadway but shares most of its sensibilities with "South Park" doesn't get away with murder, but gets away with a lot. Turns out, when songs about porn or scenes depicting graphic intimacy are delivered by cute and cuddly creatures, it's just plain funny.

"Avenue Q" proved a big hit on Broadway and swept the top three categories in the 2004 Tony Awards -- Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score. Written by Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx (lyrics, score) and Jeff Whitty (book), the national Broadway tour is at Denver's Ellie Caulkins Opera House through Sept. 21.

Much of the cast in the tour came from other "Q" productions, and it's apparent. The performances are sharp and fun. This musical entertains, for sure. Still, the show suffers from stretching 90 minutes of great material into a 2½-hour, two-act story, and "Avenue Q's" edgy cleverness eventually gives way to syrupy sentimentality.

A cast of 10 play various characters, and several of them act as puppeteers, too. Some manipulate the puppet characters on stage in plain sight, others simply play human characters. (One local note: University of Colorado grad Cullen R. Titmas understudies several roles in the tour, and he went on midway through the first act and finished Tuesday's opening show when another actor became ill.)

The play is set in New York City amid a group of young adults wandering through a post-college, pre-family or career phase. It deals with relationships, racism, sexuality, grumpy bosses, finding your life's purpose and former child star Gary Coleman. (The grown-up little man is delightfully inserted into the story as the superintendent for the building where the rest of the characters reside. Like the show as a whole, though, it's a funny bit for about an hour and a half, before it gets old.)

The best stuff comes early. The song "It Sucks To Be Me" finds all the neighbors competing in a humorous pity party. "If You Were Gay" gently tries to out the closeted Republican living among the 20-somethings. "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" playfully -- and effectively -- points out the little bitty bigot living inside most all of us.

The comedy stakes hit their highest notes, though, during "The Internet is for Porn." The disarming ditty features a large, floppy puppet named Trekkie Monster (think Cookie Monster) who keeps interjecting a truth about the World Wide Web into a cheerfully sung tune.

That's when "Avenue Q" is at its best and most ingenious -- when the sweet, wide-eyed puppet people are getting away with what the real grown-up folks couldn't.

Contact Camera Theater Critic Mark Collins at 303-473-1369 or BDCTheater@comcast.net.