David Bryan talks about The Toxic Avenger (and Bon Jovi)

David Bryan

As The Toxic Avenger returns to London's Arts Theatre, I spoke with composer and Bon Jovi keyboards ace, David Bryan

JB:     David , what attracted you to write The Toxic Avenger?

DB:     Joe DiPietro and I, my writing collaborator, we were working on Memphis - a big epic story about the birth of racism, and the birth of rock and roll. We had done some productions of it, and then we were waiting for it to come onto Broadway when Lloyd Kaufman, the man behind Troma Films, he came in and pitched the idea about doing a musical.

So Joe wrote a treatment for it and asked : “can we make it the way we want? Not, the story from the movie," and Lloyd agreed. So we set to work and it was a chance for Joe and I really to write comedy.

It's funny as hell, there's an underlying love story, and the moral of it, still, is about global warming. 

But, it's all set in comedy, and it was a blast. We did it really quickly, and it was great fun.

JB:     The Toxic Avenger is all about satire. What satire and humour appeals to you and who were your comic influences?

DB:     It's funny, Joe and I, we're the same age, we're from New Jersey, and grew up on the same comedians. When I grew up I had more comedy records than rock records!

Growing up it was Eddie Murphy. And then the Saturday Night Live crew was just funny as hell. But, I always loved the side of comedy that was just an intelligent way of looking at things from a different viewpoint. It's great, and it's a great thing to watch people laugh. Laughing is a great therapy.

JB:     The Toxic Avenger is very politically incorrect. How important is political incorrectness in modern comedy ?

DB:     What I think what we did with our piece, was that we mocked everybody. We took the piss out of everybody and everything that we could.

We mocked everything, so no one could accuse of us of bullying on any one angle. If you mock  everything, then it's funny.

JB:     Do you sense any trend in how comedy today is shifting? Do you feel that there is a greater sense of what can and cannot be laughed at in today's era?

DB:     The comedians are the ones that are supposed to push the envelope. All my favourite top comedians were the ones who did push that envelope, and say stuff that everybody thinks, but doesn't want to say. I don't have a problem with that as long as it's done in an intelligent way.

JB:     You’re famous for being the keyboards player in Bon Jovi. Tell me the difference between writing songs for a show and albums for a rock band.

DB:     Same thing. It's just writing a song.  I don't do any research. Joe and I sit down and go, "Okay, here's the character, here's the dilemma, or the journey, or what's the purpose of why this character needs to go from point A to point B, and what's driving him?" I think it's really a human story, if you will. I just put myself in the shoes of that character, and just write it, and let it all come out.

JB:     A good musical has a very clear book that the songs work around. How does the creative arc compare of writing songs for a show compare with the arc of writing songs for a Bon Jovi album?

DB:     Yeah, anytime we approach an album, it's always a beginning, middle, and end and there is a narrative.

In a musical, you have different characters and it’s a little more challenging writing for men, for women, for monsters (!) - it's a whole different world.

But the songs and the story keep evolving together. It's not like one's written in stone, and then the other isn't. We are the kind of writers that don’t just go, here's the story, and now we're going to step out of the side of the story, and here's a song. Our songs always push the characters ahead.

JB:     Within Bon Jovi do you contribute much to the composing?

DB:     Yes!  I classically trained for 15 years, so I understand music. It's really helped in that that is what really separates us from a guitar band, and then you add keyboards. All the big songs that we've had in records, with keyboards you can colour the emotion, really paint a picture. Even in the beginning ... A standout example would be, Wanted Dead or Alive. At the beginning you hear wind, and strings, and all of a sudden you're in a Western. That's what I bring to the table and I love it.

JB:     David, thank you and I wish The Toxic Avenger every success at the Arts Theatre.

The Toxic Avenger plays at The Arts Theatre until 3rd December 

Read my review of The Toxic Avenger here

Photo credit: Irina Chira  

Listen, We're Family

JW3, London

***

Written by Kerry Shale and Matthew Lloyd
Directed by Matthew Lloyd

(l-r) Kerry Shale, Isy Suttie, Maggie Steed and Tom Berish in rehearsal

Listen, We’re Family is a work of Jewish verbatim theatre, so bang up to date that when a character talks about keeping kosher even the recent horse-meat scandal gets a mention. Four actors play out the real-life spoken words of a range of interviewees across an age spectrum that stretches from young adults through to a nonagenarian East End barber.

It’s an intimately/incestuously constructed piece with Shale, who co-wrote, acting the elder male parts, whilst co-writer Lloyd also directs and though the dialog is a selection of brilliantly captured vignettes, the show is more like leafing through a live action scrapbook, rather than following a drama with an engaging plot and protagonists that we might possibly care about. To emphasise the fact that the actors are mouthing the actual words of real people, the performers all wear headphones throughout. This is a gimmick that only serves to create a virtual “fifth wall”, distancing the actors from audience. Verbatim is fine, Alecky Blythe has proved that at the National Theatre with her stunning London Road, it only requires good actors to learn a script. This show’s headphones distract and insult the audience.

The performances though are all good with some that are outstanding. Maggie Steed’s elder woman ranges from a maternal homemaker lighting Sabbath candles in her 60s through to an 80 year old widow, distraught that her separation from her husband led him to commit suicide. The insights that Steed brings are brutally stark and her performance is at times deeply moving.

Shale’s characters are predominantly middle age men, all with surprising stories, though his 91 year old barber is possibly the best portrayal of an old Jew since Eddie Murphy donned the white slap to play Saul in Coming To America. There is bittersweet irony and comedy aplenty throughout the script and Shale segues seamlessly between his roles. He will make for an interesting Willy Loman one day.

Isy Suttie is an engaging performer in the first act, covering the women under 50, with a particularly fascinating turn as an Austrian Holocaust émigré who fled to Canada before coming to London. Suttie brings the complex nuances of this survivor into a fascinating relief. As a younger whining wife however, too many of her other roles, particularly after the interval become indistinguishable and there is a sense of lazy writing here, with a failure to bring out the full potential of this talented young actress. Tom Berish as the younger man presents some of the least conventional characters. His gay guy is a refreshingly honest portrayal of a sexuality that is still viewed with prejudice by some within the Jewish community and his performance gives a pleasing challenge to too many age-old stereotypes.

In London Road Blythe crafted a clever musical via the verbatim genre, working around the most difficult of topics. By comparison, Shale and Lloyd’s work drifts. They present little more than a well-acted documentary, holding up images that whilst being comfortingly recognisable or even perhaps challenging to many in the audience, still offer little more than a series of familiar landscapes. (Though one of Shale's non-observant characters' references to the comforting familiarity of the cadences of Kaddish, the universal Jewish mourner’s prayer, is an inspired inclusion.) The recurring themes of dysfunctionality that the characters display suggests a skewed and sensationalised set of stories that are at odds with reality. Many Jewish families are flawed for sure, (so whose isn’t?) but there is more good out there than this play would suggest. 

Nonetheless, credit to JW3. It’s a bold, bravely commissioned work that is finely performed. One looks forward to more provocative theatre from this exciting and beautiful new venue.