Here it is, folks, here it is world, here’s Teeth, the Vagina Dentata musical you’ve been waiting for. Or perhaps not. Here it is, anyway. And now you may be wondering if Teeth has teeth, if it’s at all toothsome. The following review will let you know, at times between gritted teeth.
To put your wondering mind at ease, Teeth has its definite merits as adapted and somewhat rearranged by Anna K. Jacobs (book and music) and Michael R. Jackson (book and lyrics) from Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 movie of the same title. Keep in mind that, according to an authors’ note in the script, Teeth is “a horror show,” i.e., a show about horrors, not a horrible show.
The tuner unfolds in present-day New Testament Village, sometimes referred to as Eden, this Eden intended — at least initially, as Jacobs and Jackson imagine it — to conjure images of humanity’s loss of sexual innocence. In this Eden, Pastor (Steven Pasquale), heading a Kool-Aid-like religious cult populated by Promise Keeper Girls (PKGs for short) and young men called Truthseekers, preaches chastity before marriage and irrefutably declares that any other kind of sexual relationship fosters shame.
In other words, Jackson and Jacobs start out giving the impression they’re exposing civilization’s discontents (Freud never invoked) on the inculcation of shame and desire. They’re presenting adolescent heterosexual and homosexual behaviors as natural, as the essence of innocence.
The heroine of this seeming musical treatise is Dawn O’Keefe (Alyse Alan Louis), a young woman who treasures her chastity and, while attracted to handsome, chaste Tobey (Jason Gotay), wants to maintain her virginal state as well as his until marriage.
There are two obstacles. The first is a progressively increased longing to consummate the Dawn-Tobey love before the required nuptials. The second is a more troubling obstacle. When Dawn and her randy stepbrother Brad O’Keefe (Will Connolly) were children exploring each other, as children innocently do, Brad put an index finger in Dawn’s vagina and had it bitten off down to the first knuckle.
The two obstacles established, they quickly have Teeth shifting from what has begun as a sex education course — though a course unlikely to be offered in even a Montessori branch. From here on, the action aggressively becomes the “horror show” Jackson and Jacobs are truly eager to present to audiences, a musical that lifts Little Shop of Horrors and its voracious plant much higher in shock value.
Predictably, Dawn and Tobey don’t hold out until the happy day. A show of horror ensues when what occurred with stepbrother Brad’s index finger affects Tobey, only worse. Vagina dentata rears its teeth when not just a finger is inserted. Which is only the beginning of vagina dentata on the rampage. Subsequently, many more members are dismembered and held up for display as blood is copiously shed as costumer Enver Chakartash, lighting designers Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier, sound designer Palmer Hefferan, and SFX designer Jeremy Chernick go on mad theatrical sprees.
The maddest character is Dawn. At first, she’s so terrified at her flesh-biting affliction she consults Dr. Godfrey (Pasquale), an ob-gyn. Vagina dentata results, and Dawn realizes she must accept and even glory in her condition. As horrors multiply (read, detached penises), Dawn assumes the role of avenging woman and feminocracy champion Dentata, the Jacob-Jackson version of a mythical figure who has avenged men who through the millennia — men who have strictly regarded woman as at their disposal.
Simply put, Teeth is a revenge musical. Women finding a way to, uh, disarm men is its precautionary aim. For laughs? Not for laughs? There will be some who go for it tooth, line, and sinker — more women than men? — some who find it amusing, some who just find it prurient, gross.
Those looking more analytically may ask why ob-gyn Dr. Godfrey is depicted as a womanizer. Mighty stereotypical, no? They may wonder why when gay Ryan couples with Dawn and no teeth emerge, he’s jubilant at becoming “a real man.” This reversal is at odds with the script’s earlier assault on shame.
The actors distinguish themselves under Sarah Benson’s direction and Raja Feather Kelly’s abundant choreography. Jacobs and Jackson provide a strong score, a bounce back for Michael “A Strange Loop” Jackson from his White Girl in Danger follow-up. Yes, the occasional lyric may elicit the wrong kind of chuckle. But even if patrons don’t exit Teeth clamoring for the score on an original cast album, many will appreciate it most of the time, as it hurtles along under Patrick Sulken’s conducting. The same can most likely be said for the avenging-women vs. rapacious-men enterprise.
Teeth opened March 19, 2024, at Playwrights Horizons and runs through April 14. Tickets and information: playwrightshorizons.org
