The Toxic Avenger: The Musical is worth catching before the cast dies tragically
Photo by Jack Kapple
If you have the stomach for it, Arts Asylum is currently putting on the highest form / lowest brow musical in recent memory. While only a few performances remain, you may want to make it a priority to catch it sooner rather than later, as I can’t promise the small cast will survive until Sunday’s Super Bowl adjacent finale.
The Toxic Avenger: The Musical is, well, exactly what you’re expecting. The rock’n’roll send-up of the original 80’s schlock flick of the same name focuses on Melvin Ferd the Third (a nerd) who believes that someone must clean up the pollution ruining the town of Tromaville, New Jersey. The town’s blind librarian, and the apple of his eye, gives him access to proof that the Mayor has colluded with evil corporate interests to turn this American town into a dump-for-profit. Before Melvin can bring accountability to local governance, the mayor and her goons toss him into a vat of radioactive waste. Melvin emerges, forever changed into a goopy, oozing, hidieous creature who is also… quite equipped with rippling muscles and, more importantly, the ability to murder bad people via superhuman strength.
As Toxie begins to figuratively and literally clean up the streets, people celebrate him as a superhero before eventually going down the path that all mobs eventually pivot toward. Can the Toxic Avenger save the planet and get the girl? [Well. I mean, maybe. Back when the movie came out in ’84, there were more changes to address global warming. By the time this new musical hit in 2008, er, we’re getting close to the cut-off. In 2026? Yeah, no matter what happens on stage, the planet might be screwed. But! Getting the girlfriend? Still plausible!]
The musical, written by Bon Jovi’s original keyboardist, does a tremendous job of capturing the joys of hating New Jersey. Songs across this adaptation are decidedly superior to most anything you could expect from down-the-middle movie-to-musical stage productions. There are a few tracks in here that get hijacked by the need to “sing the next part of the story” or “give this character a song because it is our turn to hear their thoughts.” Instead, the story of the film serves as a chance for the music to find organic but unexpected orbits—resulting in a few genuinely great standout tracks, at least two meaningfully genuine ballads, and jokes that leave the material behind entirely. Chief among these? “My Big French Boyfriend,” which takes a single silly aside and runs it back for a touchdown.
Photo by Jack Kapple
The script and pacing are equally off to the races from the outset. The less we focus on the actual substance of the script, I suppose, is better—you really gotta strap in for early South Park levels of jokes at the expense of handicapped people and assorted ethnic trappings or else this won’t be super pleasant. I knew what to expect from something so Troma-centric, and found the lowbrow humor in line with the source material. Whether the dated material here, with some humor that borders on the cruel, is a great fit for Arts Asylum, that’s perhaps a discussion for another time! Moving on…
It’s the speed here that becomes central to the production’s highest points. The full cast of this show includes dozens of characters, but they’re all played by five actors. Luke “Skippy” Harbur (Melvin Ferd III / The Toxic Avenger) does a wonderful turn from shaky-voiced nerd to shock-jock hero, and delivers on a performance that seems impossible when considering he has to remain in a full plastic face mask for a good chunk of the two-hour runtime. Em Coffin (Sarah) runs the entire stage when she’s up there—even though her abilities around choreography and staging are limited by the script. Katie Rezabek-Laird (Mayor Belgoody / Ma Ferd / The Nun) is a force to be reckoned with as the powerhouse politician, big bad who spins from violence to sexuality to Republican politics, often in the same scene. And then, like cartoon characters that broke free of Toon Town and snuck into KC, Terrace Wyatt Jr. and Arthur Clifford play the dozens of other jamokes that populate this town.
Opening night, by the time we neared the conclusion of the production, my entire group was veering towards genuine concern for the safety of the five-person cast. They are…. simply too much. There is too much being asked of everyone here to bounce off this many surfaces, have this many limbs pulled out, and also hit the multioctave ranges required of all, whilst adding costume changes and bizarrely mutated accent work atop the rest. Everyone here does their job, and does it exceptionally well, but in those final minutes, I did need to check my program to make sure this didn’t have a multi-week run ahead. They would all be dead, I assume? It would be unethical treatment of actors to allow this show to persist.
Lucky for you, they remain alive, and their voices still function, and you have three more chances to catch the production before they (I assume) hibernate for several months to recover. The performances were memorable to the point that I’m worried a few are burned into my eyelids forever. The subject matter is a real “your mileage may vary” situation, but I’m on the record here as having had more laughs than I should have.
Toxie runs through February 8 and tickets are available here.
