Teeth, Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, is another musical about female empowerment, but it takes a decidedly different tact. Rather than employing historical survey, Teeth bites into the horror genre and tears off a satirical, darkly hilarious tale.
Based on the 2007 cult film, this wacky musical Halloween candy confection centers on virginal teen Dawn, part of a youth chastity church group called Promise Keepers. As her forbidden desires grow and so do those of her equally chaste boyfriend football-captain Toby, Dawn discovers she has dental growths in her sexual organs. Castrating chaos and hilarity ensues.
The sharp book and score are the collaborative work of Anna K. Jacobs (book and music) and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson (book and lyrics). As he did with A Strange Loop and White Girl in Danger, Jackson (along with Jacobs) lampoons puritanical extremism with barbed sarcasm. Sarah Benson’s direction has the right combination of gory and goofy—the spooky lighting by Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier strikes the right terrifying tone. As Dawn, Alyse Alan Louis perfectly conveys the Girl Scout innocent and the raging dominatrix lurking just underneath.
Jason Gotay, Will Connolly, and Jared Loftin score comically as the unwitting males who cross her path with dire consequences. Steven Pasquale tries tries too hard to be evil as a sex-phobic Pastor and to be funny as a handsy gynecologist. Other than this cavity, Teeth has bite.
