The Toxic Avenger

This past summer I was privileged and overjoyed to play the title role in The Toxic Avenger at San Jose Stage Company. I am an artistic associate with The Stage, and I am very lucky to have had their support since first appearing in Reason to be Pretty in 2010. I was ecstatic when they offered me the role of Melvin Ferd the Third and The Toxic Avenger, aka “Toxie”. Melvin is an aspiring earth scientist, and Toxie is his alter ego, emerging after being dumped into a vat of toxic goo, (which should have killed him), then reappearing as a mutant with super human strength. As Allison Rich put it: "It's like, EVERY little boy's dream to grow up to be a super hero...and you get to do it." And it was truly living a dream for three glorious months. Allison and I have played every possible combination on stage: married, siblings, and I have even played (unbelievably) her father. But finally, on this show, she was cast as my mother. On our 11th show together.

Will Springhorn Jr. and Allison Rich. A shot that did not come from the production of Toxic Avenger, but rather the Cast Fourth of July Barbeque.

The Toxic Avenger was one of those shows where you think, “Is this as good as it’s ever going to get?” I have had such luck and good fortune over my career, but playing Melvin and Toxie was an extraordinary experience. These two characters are very close to my heart, as I was the drum major of the high school marching band, and a serious dork for my entire life. Melvin’s naivety, and lack of cool are qualities that I relate to on a daily and ongoing basis. The Toxic Avenger draws on a different side of my personality. A guy who believes that against all evidence, love and truth and joy can be found. And he will risk anything at all to prove it.

Sarah, the blind librarian, destroys Melvin’s self-esteem right before his (almost) death by feeling his face, and then again near the end of the show, feeling Toxie’s mutilated face and coming to the same (reasonable) conclusion, that his disfigurement is not something that she can stomach. I was completely spoiled by my scene partner, Courtney Hatcher, who played Sarah. She is an incredible talent, a true triple threat, who still somehow remains humble and grounded and works her ass off. Every single performance I would find opportunities to watch her work from offstage, amazed by her talent and voice, all executed without being able to make eye contact with anyone or anything on stage. (The character is blind, people) We were fortunate to carpool for a majority of the rehearsal and performance run, and tried extremely hard to imbue the relationship between the two characters with authenticity and depth. We were not going to be satisfied with a caricature, we were committed to bringing depth and soul to these characters who were based on a B-film from the 80’s marketed to stoners. We constantly talked about moments that could be improved or tightened, or indeed, added to the show. Including a human bench press at the top of Act 2.

We spent time marketing the show together as well, both in English and Spanish. We spent an incredibly uncomfortable overnight in the theatre to make sure that we made our 5:30 AM call time at San Jose Univision 14 on the morning of our first preview. In addition, we got to meet the original off-Broadway Sarah, Sara Chase (now a mole woman on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) while promoting our show on KPIX 5. Sara was promoting her own show in SF, and talked to Courtney about the challenges of playing Sarah and the joy of being in The Toxic Avenger. She was even gracious enough to take this photo with us.

Courtney Hatcher, Will Springhorn Jr. and Sara Chase.

This show was extremely challenging, but in no way more so than the physical aspect. Two of the workouts that I have been doing were regularly in Toxie by happy accidents. The first being box jumps: in my normal workouts I do box jumps, roughly 30 inches high, three sets, 10-12 reps, twice a week. During rehearsals, we were trying to figure out the physical vocabulary for Toxie. In the center of the stage there was a twenty-foot wide expanse of steps going up to an upstage platform. Every time that Melvin went up the stairs he tripped and fell up the stairs. And every time that Toxie went from the stage floor to the upstage platform he did it in one standing two-footed jump. This was an audience favorite, and the one show that we had where I messed up the first jump, we lost the audience. My cast was kind enough to say that it wasn’t my fault, but I know better

I also was lucky enough to do the fight choreography for the show. As my fight friends would say: I am designed for big cowboy super hero fights. Which is true. They mean to say that I am big and broad, and good at giving and taking giant hits. Which I stuffed liberally into the choreography, joyfully and skillfully executed by The Dudes, Josh Marx and Branden Noel Thomas. I have been working on my handstand for almost a year, hoping to gain strength and balance. But for this show I was being dropped into a vat of toxic goo, and the amazing CJ Blankenship choreographed a handstand into a forward roll inside a trapdoor to simulate the drop. I was very nervous about that move going in, and he talked me through it, showed me how to do it, and put me into a position to be successful. By the end of the run I would look forward to diving straight into the vat trap door to be supported by Josh and Branden before “falling” to my death.

That is not the end of the physical story. Every show we have a fight call rehearsal before the show where we rehearse all of the physically challenging parts of the show for safety. For the majority of the run, the two women did not join us for fight call, and so I posited a challenge: If I provided pom-poms, Courtney and Allison would do a cheer for fight call. This is what they came up with on the last day: