Review: In Little Shop-Style Horror Musical Teeth, Audrey II Is a Carnivorous Cooter

So many off-Broadway shows have lost their audience on Broadway. For every Hamilton, there’s a Be More Chill; with every Stereophonic comes an Ain’t No Mo’. Everyone wants the widest audience possible, but is taking a risk on Broadway really worth sullying the reputation of a perfectly respectable piece like Days of Wine and Roses if it fails?

The producers of Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson’s horror musical Teeth have wisely gone the opposite route. Rather than make the jump from the 200-seat Playwrights Horizons to a Broadway house six times the size, they’ve made a lateral move to a 500-seater at New World Stages, while increasing the budget and tightening Sarah Benson’s production. It hasn’t lost a step in eight blocks: It was fun and disgusting in March; it’s just as brilliant and incendiary now, exactly as it should be.

Teeth is based on Mitchell Lichtenstein’s cult comedy/horror movie from 2007 about a Christian teenager who becomes an accidental vigilante after discovering that her vagina has teeth. It was a flick that my wife and her girlfriends happily watched during sleepovers. She is now the musical’s biggest superfan, able to sing every lyric and levitating with glee every time Dawn O’Keefe (the borderline psychotically committed Alyse Alan Louis) and her munching minge go a-chomping.

Dawn is the leader of the “promise keeper girls,” whose pledge to “Father God” is to remain chaste until their wedding nights so that they aren’t condemned to hell. Her church is ruled with an iron fist by her stepfather, the Pastor (Andy Karl, goofily replacing the more intensely terrifying Steven Pasquale), who senses a disturbance in the force when it comes to his birth son, Brad (Will Connolly, perfectly imbodying a stringy-haired incel). Brad has found the “Truth Seekers,” a cohort of men determined to become Alphas by destroying the “feminocracy.” Brad’s target is Dawn, who inadvertently mutilated his hand “between her pussy lips,” as he sings, when they were kids.

In this little shop of horrors, it’s not a plant that’s hell-bent on world domination, it’s the reincarnation of the goddess Dentata, seeking revenge on the predatory men in Dawn’s life. Jason Gotay is Dawn’s horny boyfriend who assaults her in the lake. The hilarious Jared Loftin is her gay BFF who live-streams them having sex. Karl more fittingly plays the gynecologist who wants to go “spelunking in the birth canal.” Dawn’s vagina chews off dongs (and a fist) as the men come.

The genius of Teeth is still intact in the show’s new digs. Jacobs’s effervescent score of bubblegum Christian rock comes through with clarity thanks to Kris Kukul’s poppy orchestrations and Palmer Hefferan’s precisely calibrated sound design (the first time I can say that about a Michael R. Jackson musical). Her book (co-written with Jackson) smartly adapts, condenses, and intensifies Lichtenstein’s screenplay for the theatrical medium — though it could probably use an intermission to breathe a little better. As for Jackson’s lyrics, quoted here throughout, they are a smutty delight. This is not a show for people who blanche at the c-word.

If anything, the fangs of Teeth feel sharper now than they did last spring. Perhaps it’s the impending election and what it could mean for female autonomy, perhaps knowing what to expect allowed me to focus on something other than the surprises, perhaps Benson and company really did hone the material — maybe all the above.

But don’t worry, everything about it is still shocking, from the eleventh-hour transformation of Adam Rigg’s set to the ominous lighting by Jane Cox and Stavey Derosier (Enver Chakartash’s costumes are spot-on, too). Best of all are Jeremy Chernick’s special effects, which have gotten a clear upgrade between runs. Blood spurts into the front row, streamers burst into the auditorium, and Audrey II’s tendrils become an array of bloody dildos suspended from the ceiling. Love Teeth or hate it, you’ll never forget it.