Ranking as one of my favorite genre movies of this century is writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 vagina dentata horror comedy Teeth (watch it HERE), which I find makes for a good double feature pairing with another one of my favorites, the 2000 werewolf coming-of-age movie Ginger Snaps. Teeth doesn’t seem to get referenced very often – so I was glad to hear (via Deadline) that it’s getting a bit of a revival. A Strange Loop playwright Michael R. Jackson has written a musical stage play adaptation of Teeth, and it’s expected to make its Off Broadway debut in February 2024!
Jackson wrote the Teeth stage play book with Anna K. Jacobs, with Jacobs providing the music and Jackson writing the lyrics.
Lichtenstein’s film had the following set-up: Dawn (Jess Weixler) is an active member of her high-school chastity club but when she meets Tobey (Hale Appleman), nature takes its course, and the pair answer the call. They suddenly learn she is a living example of the vagina dentata myth when the encounter takes a grisly turn. Like the film, the musical stage play with center on Dawn O’Keefe, “an evangelical Christian teen with a powerful secret not even she understands – when men violate her, her body bites back. Literally.”
The Playwrights Horizons theatre company provided the following statement: “In Teeth, the tethered yet battling forces of sexuality and religion push each other towards wild theatricality, and Jackson’s and Jacobs’s sharp tale of revenge and transformation tears through a culture of shame one song at a time.” This stage production will be “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.“
The Teeth musical will be directed by Sarah Benson (Fairview), with Raja Feather Kelly (A Strange Loop) handling the choreography. Playwrights Horizons is producing the stage play through a special arrangement with Mark Gordon Pictures.
Have you seen Teeth? If so, what do you think of it getting a musical stage play adaptation? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.