The Toxic Avenger, who long loomed over Ninth Avenue on a billboard gracing the side of the former Troma Building (now home to a bar called Gossip) returned to Hell’s Kitchen in style last night. As my very esteemed critical colleague Frank Scheck
in today’s print edition, the musical version of “The Toxic Avenger” is “hilarious…the show gets big laughs from the opening moments, when the performers are coughing so hard they can barely get out the first song.” The wonderful set for a show that reminded me a lot of “The Little Shop of Horrors” depicts a toxic dump in the corrupt New Jersey burg of Tromaville, complete with corroding and frequently oozing drums of waste. The tuneful and well-acted “Toxic Avenger” is based on Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz‘s eponymous 1984 low-budget horror spoof, which generated three sequels, including “The Last Temptation of Toxie” and “Citizen Toxie.” When I interviewed my old pal Lloyd last year just before Troma moved to Long Island City, he told me Troma had turned down big bucks from major studios and producers for remake rights to Toxie because he wanted to retain creative control. He and his longtime partner Herz may have a goldmine in the new musical — “The Toxic Avenger” is more entertaining than the last two or three Broadway musicals I’ve seen combined and looks to this non-expert as a good candidate for transfer to the Great White Way and a big-budget movie remake. It’s currently playing around the corner from the old Troma Building at New World Stages, which I hadn’t visited since its closing day as the Worldwide Cinemas in 2001.
