If Off-Broadway’s ‘Teeth’ Threatens To Veer Into Preaching, the Musical Is Saved by Its Own Delicious Impudence

When “Teeth,” Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson’s musical adaptation of the 2007 film, premiered at Playwrights Horizons earlier this year, I made the prediction that, notwithstanding the considerable accomplishments of its creators — particularly Mr. Jackson, who won a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize not long ago for “A Strange Loop” — we wouldn’t be seeing this show on Broadway any time soon.It was a pretty safe bet, given that the movie was inspired by the folk tale-derived legend of “vagina dentata,” which translates to “toothed vagina,” and the props featured in the stage production included an eventually staggering number of closely associated male body parts, or facsimiles thereof, bathed in equally fake blood.The new presentation of “Teeth” is indeed being staged in another off-Broadway theater, though it’s just down the street from the venue where “Romeo + Juliet,” Sam Gold’s aggressively contemporary take on Shakespeare’s tale of doomed love, is doing its darndest to be the boldest, bawdiest, most titillating show on Broadway. And while I don’t think titillation is quite what Mr. Jackson and Ms. Jacobs are going for, their work is at once infinitely more fun and, in its fashion, more thought-provoking.“Teeth,” not unlike “Romeo,” focuses on young people grappling with older, oppressive forces. Specifically, the authors —who co-wrote the book, which is accompanied by Ms. Jacobs’s music and Mr. Jackson’s lyrics — contend that misogyny is rooted in and reinforced by organized religion, while acknowledging its presence in the secular world and the violence it has wrought.That description may suggest an undergraduate thesis more than a rip-roaring musical comedy. For the most part, though, Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Jackson manage to reconcile the seriousness of their underlying message with the flamboyant irreverence of their tone, and the latter is giddily abetted by director Sarah Benson and her nimble, energetic actors and design team. Ms. Benson has retained most of those collaborators from the last staging, though a principal player is new to this one: Andy Karl, noted for his leading roles in Broadway productions such as “Rocky,” “Groundhog Day,” and “Pretty Woman: The Musical,” has replaced Steven Pasquale in a series of parts that might be collectively described as “Arrogant Male Authority Figure” — though a few words not suitable for use here also come to mind.The most prominent of these is The Pastor, the preening, bellowing overseer of the New Testament Village church sanctuary and its Promise Keeper Girls, a group of teenagers who wear purity rings and meet regularly to be lectured about the importance of maintaining their chastity. His favorite virgin is his stepdaughter, Dawn, whose mother died under mysterious circumstances; as the Pastor explains it, she “was cursed with lady cancer from being a loose woman before we got married.” The Pastor’s son, Brad (a brooding Will Connolly), loathes Dawn, and not only because his dad subjects him to emotional and physical abuse while doting on her. There was a childhood incident, it seems, where the stepsiblings acted on their budding carnal curiosity, and Brad wound up nearly losing a finger in the process. Brad is drawn to his own cult, the Truthseekers, a posse of sexually frustrated young men — led by an invisible figure called the Godfather, voiced by Mr. Karl in a booming baritone laced with an Australian accent — whose meetings could constitute a scare campaign against toxic masculinity. After Dawn’s boyfriend, Tobey, suffers a fate worse than Brad’s, the course is set for an eventual showdown between the Truthseekers and the Promise Seeker Girls — though by the wild, literally fiery finale, the latter group has morphed into something a lot more intimidating than a pack of blushing maidens.This journey is enhanced by catchy songs, embellished by Ms. Jacobs and orchestrator Kris Kukul with nods to everything from Western films to liturgical music, and by increasingly mischievous costumes by Enver Chakartash (also a designer for Mr. Gold’s “Romeo”). Adam Rigg provides the impish scenic design; the set’s centerpiece is a large cross — lit in a constantly changing array of colors, by Jane Cox and Stacey Derosier — which by the end is as crooked as the motives of the male characters here.Those would include one Dr. Godfrey, a dancing gynecologist — also played, hilariously, by Mr. Karl — and Ryan, a superficially mild-mannered teen whom Dawn mistakenly makes a confidante. Jared Loftin deftly mines the weasel lurking not too deep within Ryan, while Alyse Alan Louis, with her sweetly piercing voice, lends credibility to Dawn’s evolution from good girl to … well, you’ll see.Though “Teeth” threatens to veer into preaching itself at the end, the musical is saved by its own delicious impudence. I still wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart, or the faint of humor — particularly those who shrink from off-color jokes and gimmicks. If you fall into neither category, you’ll have a devilishly good time.

If Off-Broadway’s ‘Teeth’ Threatens To Veer Into Preaching, the Musical Is Saved by Its Own Delicious Impudence

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