Two years ago, it was The Producers and Urinetown. Last year, Hairspray was Broadway's gotta-see-it show. Now, the buzz is all about Avenue Q.

It's a Sesame Street-inspired homage that would tint Miss Piggy Day-Glo pink with embarrassment and make Kermit the Frog green(er) -- with envy. Although it is, like The Lion King, a puppets-and-people production, it is emphatically not a family show.

PUPPET PORN

Not when you have songs like The Internet Is for Porn, Everyone's a Little Bit Racist and I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today. Not when you have a puppet-on-puppet, felt-on-fur sexual encounter so boisterous that it inspires another song, You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love).

Avenue Q, born and certified a smash last spring at Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre, joins Rent and Urinetown as that rare Broadway musical that skews young.

It speaks knowingly to Gen-Xers, even those who aren't crazy about theater, for very good reasons: It's an affectionate parody in the style of a familiar childhood reference, Sesame Street; it reflects both the optimism and disillusionment that color post-collegiate life; it's a well-written, archly performed musical that revels in its own cheerful raunchiness.

The brainchild of composer-lyricists Robert Lopez (he's 28 and straight) and Jeff Marx (he's 32 and gay), Avenue Q utilizes the conventions of the beloved kiddie show -- from which it carefully (and legally) distances itself, though Marx, puppet designer Rick Lyon and fellow puppeteer-performers Stephanie D'Abruzzo, John Tartaglia and Jennifer Barnhart are all Sesame Street veterans -- to tell a very adult story.

In Jeff Whitty's script, which embraces both the sardonic and the sentimental, a recent college grad named Princeton (Tartaglia) moves into a row of crummy brownstones as far away from Manhattan as a puppet can possibly get while still claiming to live in New York City. Unemployed, he wonders what he can actually do with his bachelor's degree in English and frets about finding his purpose in life. His new neighbors, it's clear, are in no position to offer advice, given that they all agree (in song) that `` . . . it sucks to be me.''

Brian (Jordan Gelber), a failed stand-up comic, lives with Christmas Eve (Ann Harada), a Japanese-American therapist who works in a Korean deli and opines, in a heavy (and pointedly stereotypical) accent, that ``everyone's a rittle bit lacist.''

Pretty-plain Kate Monster (D'Abruzzo) is a kindergarten teacher's aide with no discernible love life, hence her quick crush on Princeton, who in turn macks on a floozy aptly named Lucy T. Slut (also played by D'Abruzzo). Button-down investment banker Rod (Tartaglia again) is a closeted gay man who longs for his straight, slovenly roommate Nicky (Lyon).

Trekkie Monster (Lyon) lives upstairs and spends most of his waking hours surfing internet porn sites. The buildings' super is none other than always-on former child star (and current California gubernatorial candidate) Gary Coleman (played hilariously by Natalie Venetia Belcon -- yes, a woman). Cuddly pastel critters called the Bad Idea Bears (Lyon and Barnhart play these Don't Care Bears) do things like goading Princeton and Kate into having lots of Long Island Iced Teas (and that wild puppet sex) on the night before Kate's big chance to sub as a teacher.

ROOTS SALUTED

Video monitors on each side of the stage serve as reminders of the musical's inspirational roots and allow for picturesque wordplay: images of five nightstands, for example, are winnowed to ''one-night stand'' after the sex-sated Lucy dumps under-achieving Princeton.

It's tough to imagine Avenue Q touring, given the vast experience and special skills of its puppeteer-performers, who stand alongside the characters they're manipulating, fuzz and flesh moving in symbiotic mirror imagery. Still, considering what this fresh, funny show has to say about finding your way from fairy-tales to some semblance of maturity, one can hope.