TOXIC AVENGER Reviews

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 3:32am

Hey All!

Today is MONDAY, April the 6th, marking the OFFICIAL opening of THE TOXIC AVENGER - Playing Stage 1 - at Off-Broadway's New World Stages! I personally caught the show on Friday night and abso-freakin'-lutely adored it! It's all kinds of sophomoric, blood-'n'-guts kinda goodness, and I loved every second of it! Having since longed for a show with heart (albeit 'removed and still beating') and hilarity, since EVIL DEAD closed. I think they have a would-be, could-be cult favorite on their hands, my friends. To cast, crew, creative(and) the rest of the peeps at New World, here's to a great night! Have fun up there! My best to all involved.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 10:39am

I'll add my wishes for the good reviews to poor in. I love the cast and had a blast both times I saw it. I sense I'll be making many return trips to New World Stages as long as this is running.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 11:29am

I hope this rocks the reviews!

[singtopher]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 7:10pm

I've got my fingers crossed for this!

[perfectliar]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 7:11pm

While I was searching for reviews, I found that Best Buy online is currently taking pre-orders for the cast recording... for only $6.99

It's being released May 5, 2009 from Time Life and has a $17.98 list price. Going to order mine now.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1962306&skuId=9289334&type=product

[singtopher]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 7:36pm

The release they are doing tonight at the show must be a special deal.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 7:44pm

Wow, what a deal. Even if it is terrible, I can't complain about 7 bucks!

Thanks for the info!

[perfectliar]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 8:04pm

singtopher - Are they selling the recording at the theatre tonight?

drama - It's far from terrible... hope you enjoy it!

[MiracleElixir]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 8:11pm

Variety is POSITIVE, with a few reservations, but almost entirely enthusiastic comments:


"A lone singer stands atop a barrel of nuclear waste and presents us with his groin as he belts the opening bars of "The Toxic Avenger." Where else could we be but New Jersey? David Bryan and Joe DiPietro's adaptation of "a movie most people watched when they were stoned," as the script confesses, has a fine sense of place, several very funny setpieces and thesps like Sarah Chase, Demond Green and Nancy Opel to recommend it. It also has pacing problems and a few gags that run too long, but it manages to thoroughly entertain even when it slacks off.
If you're some sort of prude who doesn't find brutal dismemberment funny, you may have a harder time at this show than most. A la "Evil Dead: The Musical," which occupied the same theater not long back, the offbeat tuner has reserved most of its budgetary resources for splatter effects and bloody prostheses. And, like "Evil Dead," the "Avenger" team knows you can't take a man holding a plastic model of a severed leg entirely seriously, so the violence is successfully played for giggles.

Granted, things start out calmly enough. Melvin Ferd the Third (an appropriately earnest Nick Cordero) has decided to clean up the town of Tromaville, N.J., a place even the local nun (Nancy Opel) has trouble singing nice things about ("Who Will Save New Jersey?"). Everyone from the town bullies to Melvin's mom (Opel again) knows he's a loser, but the bookwormy teen decides he's going to take on the Good Earth Corp., which has been dumping glowing green barrels all over town. Shockingly, Mayor Belgoody (also Opel) appears to be behind it all.

Melvin's budding romance with blind town librarian Sarah (Sarah Chase, ever the trooper), and his life as a relatively normal guy are cut short by those bullies (Matthew Salvidar and Green), who dunk him into a vat of toxic goo. Lucky for them, they flee in horror before he's reborn, Marvel Comics-style, as a huge, molting green dude whose brains appear to be boiling out of his head.

One of the show's greatest assets is bit player Green, whose antics are exactly audience-friendly enough without seeming hammy. When he plays an evil bully at the town library, he reveals that he's illiterate by confiding it to Sarah, then turning out and announcing it to the audience with a look of such self-consciousness you can't help but snicker.

Toxie (to his friends) yanks free an arm from one of the goons and beats him with it (he's bothering Sarah), and that's just the beginning. No longer a dweeb, Melvin begins courting Sarah anew and decides to become an environmental hero. Now that he's not nerdily hunched anymore, Cordero stands 6-foot-several and towers over everyone, including his delighted girlfriend, who makes her peace with the odd smell around her beau.

In contrast to the 1984 Troma film, producers Jean Cheever and Tom Polum appear to have spent quite a bit on this show, and Beowulf Boritt's set -- chiefly stacks of occasionally glowing oil drums -- looks terrific. The musicians play derivative hair-band licks, but David Bryan and Christopher Janke's orchestrations are deceptively complicated, notably on Toxie's I-lost-the-girl ballad, "You Tore My Heart Out."

Helmer John Rando ("Urinetown") deserves a lot of credit for the gags that go right. So much of "The Toxic Avenger" is in such bad taste that dozens of jokes, especially those about Sarah being blind, threaten to fall flat. They don't, and Rando frequently employs the script's running gags to salvage a weak moment in the text.

When, for example, Toxie and Sarah sing a duet ("Hot Toxic Love"), Rando solves the problem of the song's overlength by simply having Sarah wander offstage, to the consternation of everyone from Toxie to the spot operator. The longer she's off, the more embarrassed Toxie looks and the funnier the gag is; we forget to be bored by the song.

Then there are the songs themselves -- it's a little hard to believe it took two people to write some of these lyrics. A couple of the rhymes are reasonably clever, but by and large the production props up the material, rather than using it as a springboard. That's not a judgment on the source -- schlock musicals can be fun, as we know from their godfather, "Little Shop of Horrors." But they still need to be clever and structurally sound.

There are moments that still don't work, though they're not fatal. A lengthy, over-theatrical chase sequence is only mildly amusing, and a final battle between two of Opel's characters (performed in a half-Ma/half-Mayor costume) isn't terribly funny unless you're familiar with the embarrassing climax of "Jekyll and Hyde." To his credit, someone -- either Rando or Boritt -- has decorated several of the sets with demure photos of "Jekyll" musical star David Hasselhoff as a clue.

And that's the spirit of the whole thing, really: Fun, worth watching carefully and rewarding mostly to people in the know and in the mood."


Variety Review Updated On: 4/6/09 at 08:11 PM

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 8:44pm

They were hawking pre-orders for the cast album last Friday ... For $25. Thought it was kinda pricey, and considering I could get it for $7? I'm glad I held-off...

NICE review from Variety! Keep 'em coming!

[dramamama611]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 9:00pm

I hoping to see this in June along with a million other shows!

[singtopher]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 9:08pm

yay!

Perfectliar- I could have sworn that I read in an article somewhere that the album (which has been recorded) is being released tonight at the show. I can't find that article.

[musicalman2]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 10:23pm

NY Times is mixed to positive. Mixed on the material. Positive on the performances generally
Times Review

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 4/6/09 at 11:09pm

I can't wait for the recording!

Anyone know if they're going to continue doing their student rush? I heard from someone in the cast that they had $25 student rush day of, but that it was only good through opening? Any word? I'd love to go back and check it out again.

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 4/7/09 at 8:08am

I"m glad to read Isherwood's praise for Sara Chase. I totally agree with him about the blind joke comments. Those gags could have gotten old REALLY quickly, but she executes them so well, and with the right attitude that we are able to keep laughing.

[MiracleElixir]

Posted: 4/7/09 at 9:30am

"Anyone know if they're going to continue doing their student rush? I heard from someone in the cast that they had $25 student rush day of, but that it was only good through opening? Any word? I'd love to go back and check it out again. "


I've never heard of a show having student rush only for previews, and it's still listed on the Telecharge page.

[HBBrock]

Posted: 4/8/09 at 11:27pm

Saw this tonight and really enjoyed it!!! Sara Chase and Nancy Opel both had fantastic performances - especially Nancy Opel. The show got a great reaction from the crowd.

[Shakespearean]

Posted: 4/9/09 at 10:50am

I had the pleasure of catching Toxic Avenger last night. As has been echoed on other threads for other shows, you have to know what you are going into. If you're expecting high art, you're in the wrong theatre. If you want the funniest adaptation of a B movie (OK, more of a C- movie) brought to the stage I've seen yet, this is it. I belly-laughed laughed straight through the entire 90 minutes (and taht hurts with a belly my size). The energy and comic timing of this amazing cast was indescribable. John Rando's direction was genius, pushing limits without going so far as to wear out the jokes. This show was all about pacing and it worked 95% of the time. Everyone, even the band, was having a good time, and the audience ate it up. It's only going to get better.

Believe it or not, that wasn't my reason for writing though, this isn't another 'Me Too Review'. I wanted to address something magical, the audience itself. There were a ton of middle and high school aged kids at the show last night. Some of the material made me cringe thinking about them until I accepted that these kids see the same stuff on HBO every day. Some of these kids got a real introduction to live theatre and I think they all walked away thinking, "That was cool". I heard such voiced as they were walking out. Maybe a few theatre kids will be spared their weekly beatings because of this show :) What a thrill to see kids so enthusiastic in the lobby afterwards.

I hope this show runs til October, I'm totally there for Halloween!

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 4/13/09 at 12:46pm

Saw this last night and had a blast! So much fun and absolutely terrific performances all around. Opel is especially brilliant. It's obvious that everyone working on this show had a blast creating it from the designers to the performers to the director and writers. Just fun fun fun. :)