Dawn O’Keefe is an evangelical Christian teen with a powerful secret not even she understands – when men violate her, her body bites back. Literally. From Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Anna K. Jacobs (POP!), Teeth, based on the cult classic film of the same name, is a fierce, rapturous, and savagely entertaining new musical crackling with irrepressible desire and ancient rage – a dark comedy conjuring the legend of one girl whose sexual curse is also her salvation.
I find the result a bit mystifying. Jackson is a major talent, and Jacobs, in her Off Broadway debut, is already highly accomplished. Benson, in her stagings of “Fairview” and “An Octoroon,” has proved herself the kind of director who can deftly manage complex genre pastiche. But in “Teeth,” I’m sorry to say, this holy trinity has bitten off more than it can chew.
Jacobs and Jackson embrace this idea with a vengeance. As severed-tongue-in-cheek as Teeth may be, it takes sexual violence and retribution seriously. Jacobs and Jackson’s version of Dawn incarnates a goddess called Dentata, risen from the cthonic depths of ancient legend to reboot her crusade to dismember every man. As our antiheroine moves further down this path, the production ramps up to a climax of fire and rain, and Alan matches it with her performance. No stranger to strong women—she was Hillary Clinton in 2019’s Soft Power—she moves from trembling worry to trembling fury with fearsome abandon, backed by a female chorus of six that ably mirrors her transformation.
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