Toxic Avenger Delivers Radioactive Laughter

Radioactive laughter courses through Good People Theater Company’s “The Toxic Avenger,” wreaking sublimely silly havoc at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

In its Los Angeles premiere, Joe DiPietro and David Bryan’s 2008 musical send-up of Lloyd Kaufman’s 1984 cult film proves inspired. Using the skeleton of Kaufman’s screenplay, “Toxic” still follows ultra-nerd Melvin Ferd the Third (Jared Reed), whose crusade to clean up critically polluted Tromaville, N.J., gets him tossed into a vat of toxic waste.

Quicker than you can say Lou Ferrigno, the titular creature emerges, his burgeoning romance with blind librarian Sarah (Kim Dalton) running parallel to Toxie’s escalating mayhem, amid such bluntly self-descriptive songs as “Get the Geek,” “Hot Toxic Love,” “Choose Me, Oprah” and “All Men Are Freaks.”