The Toxic Avenger | Arts Theatre, London, 2017
David Bryan and Joe DiPietro’s rock musical comedy transferred to London’s West End following a successful run at Southwark Playhouse in 2016. Directed by Benji Sperring with choreography by Lucie Pankhurst and lighting by Nic Farman, this cult musical adaptation of Troma Entertainment’s notorious 1984 B-movie brought its outrageous blend of superhero parody, environmental satire, and deliberately tasteless humor to a limited West End run in 2017.
The musical follows Melvin Ferd III, a nerdy environmental scientist in Tromaville, New Jersey—the most polluted town in America. After being dumped into toxic waste by corrupt bullies, Melvin emerges as the Toxic Avenger, New Jersey’s first superhero, complete with grotesque mutations and superhuman strength. With his blind librarian girlfriend Sarah and his desire to clean up Tromaville, Toxie battles the town’s corrupt mayor and her evil corporation while navigating the complexities of being a hideously deformed crime-fighter.
The show won the 2009 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical during its original New York run and has since become a beloved cult favorite, performed in regional and international theaters for audiences who appreciate its affectionate parody of both superhero stories and B-movie aesthetics.
Set and Costume Design Vision
takis’ design creates the deliberately tacky, comic-book world of Tromaville, where environmental disaster meets small-town corruption in a visual landscape that references both superhero comics and the deliberately cheap aesthetic of Troma Entertainment’s low-budget film empire. The design must accommodate rapid transformations—Melvin’s mutation into Toxie, multiple locations around Tromaville, action sequences that parody superhero battles—while maintaining the show’s knowing sense of theatrical pastiche.
The costume design embraces the show’s gleeful bad taste: Melvin’s nerdy scientist wardrobe transforming into Toxie’s deliberately absurd superhero costume, complete with exaggerated muscles and visible mutations; the corrupt mayor’s power suits; Sarah’s sweetly innocent librarian aesthetic; and the various townspeople and villains who populate Tromaville’s toxic landscape.
The visual approach balances several tonal registers simultaneously: the show must look deliberately cheap (honoring Troma’s aesthetic) while remaining professionally executed; it must suggest genuine environmental devastation while maintaining comic distance; it must create a superhero world that’s both affectionate parody and functional dramatic environment. The design’s self-aware theatricality—visible stagecraft, comic exaggeration, pop culture references—supports the show’s meta-theatrical humor while allowing the genuine emotional story at its center to land.
The overall visual strategy creates a world that looks like a comic book drawn by someone with more enthusiasm than technical skill, filtered through the deliberately trashy aesthetic that made Troma Entertainment a cult institution.
Creative Team
- Designer: takis
- Director: Benji Sperring
- Choreographer: Lucie Pankhurst
- Lighting Designer: Nic Farman
- Music and Lyrics: David Bryan (Bon Jovi keyboardist)
- Book and Lyrics: Joe DiPietro
- Based on: The 1984 film produced by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz for Troma Entertainment
Production Context
The Toxic Avenger represents a specific subgenre of musical theatre: cult film adaptations that embrace their source material’s outsider status while adding theatrical sophistication. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 2009, finding an audience that appreciated its combination of juvenile humor, rock score, and genuine heart beneath the deliberately offensive surface.
The show’s journey from cult B-movie to Off-Broadway musical to West End production demonstrates how musical theatre has expanded to include more diverse source material and tonal approaches. David Bryan’s rock score—drawing on his experience with Bon Jovi—gives the show genuine musical energy, while DiPietro’s book balances gross-out comedy with a surprisingly sweet love story and earnest environmental message.
The 2016 Southwark Playhouse production introduced the show to British audiences, leading to the 2017 West End transfer. The UK productions demonstrated how the show’s satirical take on American culture—small-town corruption, environmental destruction, superhero mythology—could resonate with international audiences who appreciate both the parody and the underlying sincerity.
The Toxic Avenger continues Troma Entertainment’s legacy of subversive, low-budget filmmaking while demonstrating how even the most unlikely source material can inspire genuine theatrical creativity when approached with affection, humor, and theatrical imagination.