Avenue Q writers Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx. She opened Avenue Q at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in March 2003 and moved with the show to Broadway that July. She took a break for maternity leave in late 2004, returning in early 2005. Her son is named Elvis. Harada left the Broadway company of Avenue Q on 26 February 2006. Her role was taken over by Ann Sanders. In June 2006, she opened the London production of Avenue Q at the Noël Coward Theatre in the West End. She played her last performance on 18 November 2006; the role was taken over by Naoko Mori. She is the only actress who played the role of Christmas Eve in both the Broadway and West End productions of Avenue Q. About her performance in the Broadway production, Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times: "Counseling the romantically troubled Kate, she temporarily drops her habitually pinched voice to deliver, in the show's wittiest coup de théâtre, a full-throated ballad in the manner of a 1950's musical diva...The more you love someone/The more you want to kill him, Christmas sings in a shivery, rafters-shaking alto. And though you can construe the song as a satire if you choose, there is no doubt that Christmas means every word she sings." Hilton Als, in The New Yorker, in another rave for the show, noted that Avenue Q "has so much to recommend it...But not to single out the remarkable Ann Harada — a funny girl who can sing, act, and let the audience in on the joke all at the same time — would be a mistake." On July 6, 2009, Harada returned as part of the final Broadway cast of Avenue Q. The show closed on September 13, 2009. A September 15 article in The New York Times stated the show would relocate to an Off-Broadway location and resume production October 3. Harada has reprised the character of Christmas Eve for a series of one-night-only benefits for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS originally entitled Christmas Eve with Christmas Eve. The premise is that Christmas Eve (the night) is when all of the fantasies of Christmas Eve (the character) come true and all of those fantasies involve singing duets with Broadway leading men in ways that hysterically reinterpret well-known showtunes. The third annual Christmas Eve with Christmas Eve was on 12 December 2011. The