TORONTO -- If the title "Trey Parker's Cannibal! The Musical" isn't clue enough, the team behind the new stage show assure it has plenty of bite to it.

"There's blood, fart jokes. ... We do eat somebody," star Liam Tobin said at a recent rehearsal at Toronto's Panasonic Theatre, where a revamped version of the show is making its premiere through March 8.

"The guys eat a chunk off one guy's butt and stuff like that," added the St. John's, N.L., native.

Said co-writer/cast member Trevor Martin of Toronto: "If you're a fan of 'South Park,' if you could handle 'Book of Mormon,' if you could handle any of the other Trey Parker/Matt Stone collaborations, you could handle this.

"But you have to go in expecting that your jaw is probably going to drop at some point, because we hit pretty much everything."

Parker is, of course, the co-creator of "South Park" and "The Book of Mormon."

He first made "Cannibal! The Musical" in 1993 as a film while studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

A stage adaptation debuted in 1998 in Northern California and eventually ran off-Broadway and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.

The show puts an irreverent spin on the true story of Alfred (Alferd) Packer, an American prospector who confessed to cannibalism in the 1870s. He did it while travelling with five other prospectors through the Colorado mountains in the winter.

The Toronto production of "Cannibal! The Musical" is the first full stage adaptation of the story.

Christopher Bond, co-creator and director of "Evil Dead -- The Musical," set out to make the new "Cannibal" incarnation seven years ago. Martin came onboard as a co-writer and Aaron Eyre signed on as composer to create a new score and music.

Tobin plays Packer alongside Elicia MacKenzie as reporter Polly Pry, who investigates the story.

"In some ways it brings me back to my dinner theatre days when I was working at the Giggle Dam in (Port Coquitlam) over in B.C., and we did really crass comedy sketches," said MacKenzie, who grew up in Surrey, B.C., and previously starred in "The Sound of Music" and "Rock of Ages" in Toronto.

Still, with experienced performers including MacKenzie and Tobin, Bond noted the show also includes "big, beautiful choral numbers, beautiful music, great dancing."

And Martin insisted they've "done everything respectfully."

"We're not out to be angry about anything or insulting. It's all in good fun."