The Toxic Avenger writers David Bryan and Joe Di Pietro with actor Mark Anderson. Pictures: Roy Tan
Collaborators David Bryan and Joe DiPietro’s comedy rock musical The Toxic Avenger has returned to London, finding a new home at the Arts Theatre.
The Toxic Avenger previously played at the Southwark Playhouse, Off-Broadway, Toronto and, most recently, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where it was one of Musical Theatre Review’s ten nominees for its inaugural Best Musical Award.
New Jersey boys, Bryan and DiPietro also collaborated on Tony Award-winning Memphis the Musical and are now working on a show about Princess Diana which will receive its first previews in the US.
DiPietro wrote the books and lyrics for I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, the second-longest running Off-Broadway musical which continues to be revived across the world.
Bryan is best known as the keyboard player and a founding member of the rock band Bon Jovi, one of the most successful bands in music history.
The Toxic Avenger is a rock comedy musical based based on a 1980s cult classic sci-fi comedy from genre filmmakers Troma Entertainment.
You seem to have a lot of success as collaborators, what made you want to work together?
Joe DiPietro: I had written a script for Memphis the Musical about the birth of rock‘n’roll and I wanted a real rock‘n’roll guy to work with. I gave the script to my agent and he sent it out into the world. Two months later I got a call from David Bryan of Bon Jovi.
David Bryan: Joe had put the lyrics in the script and I called him up and said I’d heard every song. He said: “Could you hear anything else in your head?” I replied: “Yes, there’s other people in there, but we’ll get to that.”
JD: Then he sent me a song the next day and I listened to it. We did a version of ‘The Music of My Soul’ which is the second song in Memphis, and that’s essentially how we wrote it.
There’s a lot of lyrics in that script and he picked that one. It’s the main character Huey’s first song in the show which typically in musical theatre is the ‘I want’ song about what the lead character aspires to. It’s very important in a musical and that’s what David gravitated toward.
DB: I had no training in musicals or anything, but it’s all about people, about being honest, and that song to me is the foundation of what this guy is.
JD: So he picked the foundation and also the sound of that song. He laid out the foundation for how the rest of the show would sound. We got along and here we are!
Pictures: Roy Tan
The Toxic Avenger couldn’t be any more different to Memphis, how did you approach creating each show?
JD: Same story.
DB: We just went green instead. There’s much less racism against green people we found.
JD: We’re both really big fans of comedies and we’re both really big fans of rock‘n’roll obviously. Memphis was such a big show to get produced on Broadway and the West End, so we were looking for a little show to do and something a little lighter and this was what we approached.
We’re both from New Jersey, which is where The Toxic Avenger takes place, so we knew every Jersey joke and then some. We wanted to see if we could write a little, out there, offensive musical comedy with rock‘n’roll and just a really great time. We just thought it would be really fun to write.
DB: Where else could we write about a nun saying “fuck”? There’s not a lot of opportunities and that was the chance. At the heart of it there’s a tender love story still and there’s a global theme, so we accomplished it in a good way. It was fun as hell and it’s funny as hell.
JD: It was fun to write and it’s really fun to see.
Why did you decide to to turn the cult film into a stage production?
JD: We were approached by Lloyd Kaufman who is the mad genius behind Troma Entertainment. We came up with The Toxic Avenger and he gave us, shockingly, full permission to take the basis of his very out there, drug-induced film and to do whatever we wanted with it.
It’s Beauty and the Beast essentially, but we just love the New Jersey take on it. We just loved how out there and really offensive it was.
DB: We’re from the little town that the big town [New York] shits on, so for us it’s like we’re the underdog all the time.
JD: It’s fun to write a show where every song literally is there to make people laugh. We just want to have as many outrageous characters, costume changes and surprising jokes, and for everybody to just have a good time, not be politically correct at all.
DB: We’re like: “Okay, we’ve got the white dude, black dude, and these characters play 15 roles each, so how do we do that?” That’s for the wonderful director to figure out!
JD: Benji Sperring, the director in London, does a brilliant job of making it full frontal funny. The voices sync so well, it’s amazing. It has at times a pantomime feel to it, at times a Monty Python feel to it.
How do audiences here respond differently to audiences in the US?
DB: Well we grew up on Monty Python and the sarcasm of it, the English sense of humour is great.
JD: They’re laughing as much here, if not more. It’s raunchier here, they curse more in this one.
There’s a few more sexual props in this one and they find that very funny.
You’re both from New Jersey, how did that affect your plans for the show?
DB: Yes, we live in the Stink, so we don’t have to imagine what a Stink is like.
JD: We did zero minutes of research on this show.
DB: We did 55 years of research [Joe laughs in agreement]. I still live in Jersey.
JD: My parents are still in Jersey so we are very much Jersey boys. We wrote a song called ‘Jersey Girl’. It was really fun to keep thinking how to make this funnier and funnier and funnier.
Composer David Bryan
Superheroes are quite trendy, but this show does take a tongue in cheek approach, do you think that has contributed to its success?
JD: Anything you do, people walk in with expectations. If you exceed those, that’s winning. If they’re underwhelmed, it’s not winning. Everyone who sees it has definitely had their expectations exceeded. It’’s super, super funny, and you also come out with a little message about protecting the environment and a real love story that you actually care about. Ultimately what makes a show is when you care about the characters.
The Toxic Avenger was one of Musical Theatre Review’s ten nominated shows for its Best Musical Award at Edinburgh this year, how have you found the reception from audiences and critics?
JD: Ah, fabulous! The audiences have been fantastic.
DB: I was here for the Southwark Playhouse production and they just sat there and laughed their faces off, the place was roaring. Every time I see it, I can’t wait to laugh, it’s the best therapy in the world. You come out, your face hurts from laughing so much.
[To DB] Has your rock background in Bon Jovi influenced your musical theatre writing?
I don’t categorise anything like that, I just approach it as “what does this need?” and where do I come from. I don’t do research, I just do it and hopefully it’s good.
Either Joe says: “I like that” or he says: “Hmmm, okay, gimme a minute, I think I’ve got it.” We’re real quick like that. You can sit about talking about writing or just do it.
JD: Especially comedy, I think comedy is instinctual. With comedy you have to write it, put it up and see what works, so we’re also big cutters and re-writers of things.
Where do you get your inspiration from for the shows your write?
JD: David pointed out that we actually tend to write about the underdog. In The Toxic Avenger the nerdy scientist gets beat up a lot and winds up getting the girl (spoiler alert!) and saving the world.
Our next two musicals are about women who are working in a man’s world and one of them is Princess Diana who certainly was an underdog in many ways in her life. I think whether we know it or not we like writing about the underdog.
The human story is an eternal story. The great pieces always last because of how we relate to each other as human beings never changes.
JD: Society changes, culture changes, but that doesn’t change. So if you write about real people, even in a very hyped-up environment like in The Toxic Avenger, these are real people with real wants and needs.
Librettist and lyricist Joe DiPietro
Can you tell us a bit more about the Princess Diana musical headed for Broadway?
JD: You Brits all want to know, I don’t know why! Princess Diana was a remarkable individual, had a huge heart, and changed the way the world did charity. In America she’s really considered a huge heroine. People loved her.
We don’t know as much about her as the Brits do obviously but we knew her legacy and we followed her.
I was just reading about her and I thought this is a wonderful character for a musical. She was someone who had this huge heart and the entire world loved her, except for the one man who she desperately wanted to love her, and that was her husband.
It’s a very focused musical on her marriage, it just deals with them, and it ends with their separation and then what happened to her. I think it’s a very positive, yet complex, portrayal of her.
DB: It’s a human story. On the other side of the pond it’s less political because we don’t have kings and queens and princesses, that’s more fairy tale stuff. We don’t have any political motivation in any way, shape or form, they’re just human beings and we want to know how they triumphed and how they didn’t.
Diana triumphed through her trials and tribulations – she started out being innocent and ended up being strong, lived her life on her own terms, and ended up being very charitable and helping out the little guy.
JD: She had a huge heart which runs through the musical and we see how that really carried her through her personal tribulations.
Do you think we will get to see it in London?
DB: Yeah!
JD: We hope so, yes, that’s the plan!
Tickets for The Toxic Avenger are available HERE.
Readers may also be interested in:
The Toxic Avenger – Arts Theatre, London – Review
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