The first time one of the prosthetic dicks is held up in wonder by a post-coital young woman while a guy writhers onstage with a gushing midsection, the audience gasps a bit at the audacity and then cheers — loudly. This is “Teeth,” after all. Things are going to get a little bloody.
“Teeth” the movie is a 2007 independent horror film centering vagina dentata, the mythical condition where women have teeth growing in their vagina, which become activated, to men’s detriment, during intercourse. In the film, Dawn (Alyse Alan Louis in the musical) is a teenage girl just beginning to explore her body and is horrified to discover what lurks in her. “Teeth” is a feminist cult hit, but it was never the kind of IP that screamed “a musical adaptation is forthcoming!”
But college friends Michael R. Jackson (book and lyrics) and Anna K. Jacobs (book and music), thought thematically there was something there, so for the last 15 years they’ve been working on an adaptation of Dawn’s journey and sexual awakening for the stage. (The musical development process tends to take a long, long time.)
“I was really taken by Dawn’s story and the intersection of sexuality and religion, which were two themes I’m often exploring in my own writing,” Jackson, a Tony and Pulitzer winner for his “A Strange Loop,” explained.
He continued: “I am interested in any sort of very insular, restrictive culture that goes against somebody’s natural instincts. The thing I’ve been saying about my way into the source material is that I’m not a teen evangelical with teeth in my vagina, but spiritually I am. And so, I’m not a woman. I don’t purport on any level to know that experience and yet, watching Dawn’s story and the way she struggled with trying to to live up to these higher Christian ideals, but also have these sexual urges, that just was so my entire childhood. Teen life was being in church, knowing I was gay, having sexual feelings, not having anywhere to sort of direct that energy, and trying to constantly reconcile the two until I could do it no longer, or felt I could do it no longer. And so that’s really where my inquiry lies is that sort of push and pull between those two [poles].”
Subtitled “A coming-of-rage musical comedy,” “Teeth” on stage leans harder into the virgin/whore dichotomy and the hypocrisy of holier-than-thou religion than the film. There’s plenty of gory, shocking fun in the streamlined story, but by modernizing it slightly, viewers will find even more to, well, chew on. For example, the character of Brad (Will Connolly in the stage show), Dawn’s creepy stepbrother, is noticeably reworked; here, he’s a loner teen who has fallen into the “manosphere” of the dark web of podcasts and blogs. A very 2020s problem!
“Around the Me Too era, around that pivot point, there was a lot of work being generated that was very feminist, and I’m proud of how feminist this work is but [a lot of projects then] sort of seemed to neglect the male experience as part of patriarchy,” Jacobs explained. “Brad in the film is very much a reflection of the time that the film was made, that sort of emo goth kid, and that didn’t translate.”
Directed by Sarah Benson, the Off-Broadway production is a sharp satire — and it’s also really, really fun, particularly the songs, which run the gamut from longing ballads of self-discovery to burn-it-all-down girl group anthems. Plenty of the tunes also contain the kind of NSFW lyrics that land with shocked delight to an audience appreciative of someone getting away with a really dirty joke. (On the thrill of being turned on for the first time: “My panties are wet / but it’s not blood or sweat” is a particularly memorable one-liner.)
New songs, character updates, all of that is de rigeur for a stage adaptation of a movie. Original film writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein “would come to our workshop presentations, and he would offer feedback, but never impose it,” Jacobs said. Less standard? The discovery that flaccid penises are a bit like snowflakes — and need to be differentiated for realism reasons.
“I think one of my favorite aspects has been the journey of individualizing the penises,” Jacobs said of the dozens of prosthetic dicks used in the show. “They’re all dildos that come boxed, and they all kind of look similar, and so there’s been some work to make them look more discrete from one another, which tickles me to no end.”
It better. After all, if you’re going to write a musical where vaginas have teeth, you better be having a lot of fun while doing so.
“Teeth” is now playing at New World Stages in NYC. A cast album is streaming on Spotify.
