Review: Teeth Is a Wild Horror Musical About a Carnivorous Vagina

At first glance, Teeth doesn’t appear to be natural source material for a musical. The low-budget 2007 comedy-horror flick by Mitchell Lichtenstein is about a devoutly Christian teen who discovers teeth in her vagina. It’s a property that seemed destined to live in late-night watch parties accompanied by weed and popcorn, but Anna K. Jacobs (book and music) and Michael R. Jackson (book and lyrics) scooped it up and turned it into the brilliant must-see musical now making its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons.

Teeth is about Dawn (Alyse Alan Louis), a young “promise keeper” who has pledged to save sex for marriage. Her stepfather (Steven Pasquale) is the pastor at their evangelical church, where he warns kids about the dangers of premarital sex. But his own son, Brad (Will Connolly), has found a new guru who leads an online group of “truth seekers,” young men frustrated with the “feminocracy” and determined to reclaim their traditional status. Dawn is the good girl in this family, but will she be able to resist the advances of handsome basketball player Tobey (a painfully earnest Jason Gotay)? At least a part of her will in this transgressive comedy that might alternatively be titled Little Snatch of Horrors.

Jackson and Jacobs are indebted to the 1982 Ashman and Menken tuner, which is still the most successful example of the camp-horror genre in musical theater. We can see its influence in the maniacally committed performances, the nod to Yiddish theater in the song “Girls Like You,” and the intoxicating strain of genuine horror that runs beneath each gut-busting comic beat. But the authors of Teeth draw on much older magic, back millennia to Euripides and The Bacchae, to tell this story of women who bite back at the patriarchy.

We feel that every time the chorus of women rises under Dawn, like when she sings, “’Cause a woman’s hole leads straight to hell / It’s full of lust we’re meant to quell / And hungry lips / That hum below / The fount of shame / A monthly flow / And other dark secrets we probably don’t even know.” And like a call-and-response, the promise keeper women chant between each lyric, “Desire! Desire! Desire! Desire!” They are supplicants to Vagina dentata, baying for blood.

Jackson’s lyrics consistently provoke guffaws and gasps from the audience, while Jacobs’s pop-infused music straddles the thin line between hormonal adolescence and religious ecstasy. The script efficiently condenses Lichtenstein’s screenplay while making some smart changes that raise the stakes so that this isn’t just the story of one woman with an extraordinary vagina, but the overture to a world war between the sexes.

Brad is the most notable example of that. An inexplicable jerk in the film, his behavior is now driven by his poisonous relationship with his father. Pasquale’s eyes glow with rage as he takes a belt to his wayward son, whom Connolly endows with real vulnerability. His grievances are legitimate, if misdirected, making him a more compelling villain.

Similarly, the character of Ryan has been transformed into Dawn’s gay best friend who, in this tiny theocracy, obviously has his own warped motivations. Jared Loftin is hilarious in this role, delivering a scene-stealing performance that is both vocally impressive and physically daring.

But the frenzied heartbeat of the production is Louis, who brings unrivaled intensity to her portrayal of Dawn. Her horror at discovering the truth about her body is serious, a sturdy dramatic platform from which the comedy of this show springs. Her transformation from mousy teen to vengeful goddess is frightening and magnificent.

Sarah Benson’s efficient staging initially appears to be a model of frugality, with every scene taking place in a church meeting room furnished with ugly red carpet and cheap wood paneling. But Adam Rigg’s set is full of surprises which only reveal themselves as the musical hurtles toward its apocalyptic conclusion. Enver Chakartash’s costumes reinforce the live music video magic of the show, with the chorus changing into several sickening looks. The aggressive lighting (Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier), heart-pounding sound (Palmer Hefferan), and gross-out special effects (Jeremy Chernick) work together for a satisfying live horror experience in which our senses come in close contact with ancient and powerful elements. The true gravity of Teeth sneaks up on us as Raja Feather Kelly’s sly choreography imperceptibly morphs from TikTok to death cult.

“Fear, pain, power, death,” the women sing, incanting the pillars of their new creed and beseeching the audience to submit. Not content to write a stale send-up of Christianity and its stunted sexuality (a topic that offers little to challenge the assumptions of off-Broadway audiences), Jackson and Jacobs have instead created a riotous and prescient vision of where we’re headed as the politics of men and women radically diverge. Unassumingly brilliant, Teeth convincingly shows that, as the old Gods become domesticated, new ones will rise to take their place in satisfying the primal human desire for irrational tribalism, fire, and flesh.