Avenue Q - Theatre Royal, Nottingham

If you’ve ever wondered about the hand life’s dealt you or the best way forward, then these wonderful puppets will point the way.

Their – at times – outrageous path through a section of their own lives may reveal the inspiration to help you through a troubled time too.

In that respect they owe an awful lot to The Muppets. Cleverly constructed puppets with carefully drawn characters who are, for the most part, knowledgable, well-meaning and of course fallible.

And it’s that fallibility which makes for such a great story in a comedy musical that’s now a worldwide hit.

From the off the songs tell us how ‘It Sucks to Be Me‘, thanks to new graduate Princeton, who turns up to live on Avenue Q with his new degree but no experience and no job.

One of his neighbours explains to another that he‘d still love to be a friend ‘If You Were Gay’ and then the adult realities of life are hammered home with the delightfully-written and performed ‘Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist’.

Are you starting to get the picture? Maybe not: this is by no means a “right-on” morality tale. It’s an adult show with the F-word just five minutes in. Human actors share the stage with puppets and puppeteers – and the mix works well!

We get a puppet vamp, puppet nudity and even puppet sex. But it’s not as outrageous as you might imagine. Hilarious, yes – but not indecent or even titillating.

There is some outrageous talent among the puppeteers though, with Katherine Moraz, Chris Thatcher and Sam Lupton among the leading lights.

So we witness a tender love story, a tale of true friendship and learn that ‘There is Life Outside Your Apartment’, but find that ultimately, many people never find the purpose Princeton seeks.

Does he find what he’s looking for? Why not give this a whirl and see for yourself? The show runs until Saturday with tickets available at all prices.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Royal Centre

Who’d have thought Douglas Adams would have predicted wikipedia?

For The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is precisely that, according to the introductory lines of this long-venerated work.

This delectable treat for sci-fi geeks of a certain age made it clear that hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Wonderfully played by a much-loved cast, this stage show recreates what the original radio production may have been like if recorded before a live audience.

Taking material from across the trilogy of five books it brought together the cast from the original radio series from 1978: Simon Jones, wearing well as Arthur Dent, Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect; the lovely Susan Sheridan as Trillian, Mark Wing-Davey perfectly slipping into character as Zaphod Beeblebrox and the voice of Stephen Moore as Marvin, the Paranoid Android. "Life. Don’t talk to me about life…"

So we learn about life, the universe, and everything.

How time is an illusion and lunchtime doubly so; the reality brought to us by guest star "voice of the book", Christopher Timothy.

We embark on a romp through time and space, the history of planet earth, how it all actually makes sense and how Marvin saves us all.

The most famous lines brought a ripple of applause as aficionados lapped up this peculiar genre – although it has to be said that there was a predictable age range in the packed house for a book that’s almost 35 years old.

Is this sort of thing going to happen every time they use the Infinite Improbability Drive? Very probably.