TEETH
Book and Music by Anna K. Jacobs
Book and Lyrics by Michael R. Jackson
Based on the screenplay by Mitchell Lichtenstein
Directed by Sarah Benson
Playwrights Horizons
Reviewed by David Spencer
With experience and—at nearly 70, I guess I have to say it at last, age—variously comes wisdom (one hopes)—and over decades I have learned that a musical can’t be assessed properly if you deny the reaction of the audience. Partly this comes from my own career as a musical dramatist; it takes time, but you learn to be merciless with yourself about what’s working and what isn’t, and it gets VERY granular. And that teaches you to be as attuned to the same in the work of others. And the audience’s perception of it.
And that leads to something related that perforce has to be included in my remit as a critic. I have to acknowledge when the audience enthusiasm is genuine, even when my own response may be muted (as well as the reverse, but that’s another topic).
Even this can be nuanced. At such as Bad Cinderella, you have to ignore audience response because it’s triggered by pandering rather than earned via some version of authentic artistry, even if that artistry is down to showmanship. Crap is objectively crap and operates on a different level. (The gestation of this phenomenon is yet a third topic, and why it exists is too complex to get into here.)
But when there’s something genuinely cultural going on—which can include change in aspects of social sensibility, musical and verbal vocabulary, generational transition—it’s another story. You can say why you think a particular ride is problematic, but you can’t categorically recommend that no one else should get on board.
All a critic can do, in that instance, is detail his own impression.
Such an experience for me is Teeth.
With a book by Anna K. Jacobs (who is also composer) and Michael R. Jackson (who is also lyricist), it’s an adaptation of the cult horror film written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein. With a primarily pop-rock score of higher-than-average craft for that genre, it tells the story of a late teenage woman in a deep south town that is basically run by the pastor of an oppressive evangelical group, who, when she finally gives in to sex, determines that she has vagina dentata—teeth, you know, down there, in there somewhere—because they bite off her first boyfriend’s penis. And eventually the peenies of others.
Treated as dark comedy, Teeth is a riff on the themes of empowerment emerging from oppression, female empowerment in particular. And much of the audience—tacking toward young, the night I attended—is going wild for it. Not all; but palpably most.
I found myself never bored but increasingly restive (the opposite of what it sounds like). This kind of horror tale can be delivered with campy abandon—rarely a choice I like because it’s as winky and self-satisfied as it is anarchic—or with that balance of tongue-in-cheek and high drama that co-exist via absolute sincerity in a storytelling universe that plays irony and comedy for real stakes—no winking: think Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And indeed Teeth, the source movie, serves up the story in that mode.
But Teeth the musical wants to have it both ways. The cultish environment is instantly absurd; the religious affirmations, the extremes of behavior among the faithful, are right out of the camp playbook (to be sure, a fine line divides camp from verisimilitude in the world of fundamentalism, but in the service of dramatization, the line exists). Yet there are moments of genuine crisis and/or suspense that shift gear into more serious mode.
In part, this resistance to settling on a tone is due to the approach of director Sarah Benson. No mistake, the script and score give her ample justification for the bifurcated choice—but I think it was within her remit to locate the tonal sweet spot and guide the authors toward helping her maintain it. The set design (Adam Rigg) contributes to the sense of a meandering tone. With a big cross of Jesus (just the naked cross, no Jesus on it) that never leaves center stage as a focal point, plus the furniture and props of a made-do, makeshift community and environs, the palate seems intended to indicate B-movie aesthetics…but seems less a style statement than budget-minded and random. It’s not a very seductive set.
Despite the premise, the bloodletting and gore isn’t prolific. I suppose one even might say it’s ironically tasteful…(pun intended?)…but there too, bifurcation: What we’re seeing isn’t as awful as what we’re told we’re seeing. The ironic flip side of this may be a key factor. Even if you find the concept disturbing in the abstract, you don’t have to brace yourself for the reality of gruesome special effects. Silly ones, yes. Horrific ones: not so much. The original Sweeney Todd was bloodier.
There’s more I can say about Teeth, the musical, but it would mean spoilers—there’s a major turn where the musical diverges from the film (and seems, too late, to be claiming its identity as a radicalized feminist manifesto)—so I’ll just make two more observations.
First: that the cast is pretty good, and at the performance I attended, standby Helen J Shen as the girl with the grinders, was better than that; in a way she was the glue keeping the fractured tone together, because she never lost the sense of real stakes.
And second: The show has been extended twice, obviously by popular demand, and the audience is very vocally buying in. My theory why? And I write this as a diehard liberal Democrat: It’s tapping into a woke zeitgeist that celebrates the indiscriminate trashing of convention. I’m not saying that all the musical’s fans are proponents of that; nor am I even saying that the musical’s authors mean to endorse it. Not per se. But the story, the symbolism and the pop culture vibe are converging in an era that does support it. (Let’s not forget this fact of theatrical history: In 1971, Follies lost the Best Musical Tony Award to Two Gentlemen of Verona.)
And sometimes such convergence is all you need for the alchemy of success.