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    Review: An Affair to Dismember, in the Gory Musical ‘Teeth’

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    A cult horror film about a teenage girl with a surprise set of chompers gets another surprise: the song-and-dance treatment.So unexpected, contrarian and maximalist are the musicals of Michael R. Jackson that I spend a lot of time between them wondering what he’ll do next. First came “A Strange Loop,” about a “fat, Black, queer” man stuck in a cycle of shame by his faith. Then came “White Girl in Danger,” about soap opera characters so privileged and confident they feel total freedom to do what they like.Now, in collaboration with Anna K. Jacobs, comes the remix, “Teeth,” which opened on Tuesday at Playwrights Horizons. It too is a show about faith and shame, but as experienced by an alpha white girl in the most biting ways.Literally.“Teeth,” with music by Jacobs, lyrics by Jackson and a book by both, manifests all three elements of the Jackson formula. Based on the 2007 cult horror film by Mitchell Lichtenstein, it is a parable set in motion by a young woman’s discovery of vaginal incisors that spring shut when sexual violence is done to her. Living in a paternalistic faith community, where men believe (as one lyric has it) “the weaker sex has weakened us,” such violence is never far away — and so neither is dismemberment.Well, if you don’t want to see bloody amputated penises, why come to the theater?Perhaps for Jackson’s provocative mix of high-mindedness and low satire. Both are fully evident in Sarah Benson’s production, even if they never blend into a satisfying whole.The low satire, mostly in the setup, is the more successful tactic. It offers a winking subversiveness and plenty of laughs, especially in the catchy pop-rock tunes with their sharp, smutty rhymes. About the only ones I can repeat here are “gravity/cavity” and “zucchini/weenie.”But the elaborate ideological superstructure is also rewarding at first. It puts the tale in the context of current culture wars between those who seek to restore male dominance and the supposedly castrating women they call tools of the “feminocracy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Bringing ‘Teeth,’ a Feminist Awakening With a Lethal Bite, to the Stage

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      Michael R. Jackson is helping adapt the darkly comic horror film into a musical. But can a show about a teenager with vagina dentata sing?Michael R. Jackson doesn’t have a vagina. He also doesn’t not have one.“While I’m not a teen evangelical with teeth in my vagina,” he said, “spiritually I am.”Jackson’s spectral self-identity was a guiding light as he and the composer Anna K. Jacobs collaborated on “Teeth,” a new musical based on Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 indie scary movie of the same name. It’s about a high school student named Dawn who discovers to her horror that she has vagina dentata — a myth, found across cultures and eras, about a vagina that has a lethal set of chompers. (The film is streaming on Tubi, and the show is in previews Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons before a March 12 opening.)If you’re going to musicalize a horror movie, “Teeth” is a doozy, and a gamble. Darkly comic and at times stomach-churningly gory, it’s a touchstone of feminist body horror and an exemplar, along with “I Spit on Your Grave” and “Jennifer’s Body,” of a rape-revenge film that indicts misogyny and body shame for the grip they have on women’s sexual autonomy.Jackson, the show’s lyricist, and, with Jacobs, co-writer of the book, said he was drawn to adapt “Teeth” because of how it frames horror and dark comedy around sex and conservative Christianity — two themes that also raged through his 2022 Broadway musical, “A Strange Loop,” a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner.“I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own body and to feel like somebody’s going to catch you masturbating and what that means, that you’re going to go to hell,” said Jackson, who grew up in the Baptist church. “I immediately glommed onto Dawn because I’ve had that internal experience.”That last line got a laugh from two other members of the “Teeth” creative team who, with Jackson and Jacobs, sat for an interview at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan before a recent matinee: the director, Sarah Benson, and the choreographer, Raja Feather Kelly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      ‘Teeth’ Adaptation and ‘Stereophonic’ in Playwrights Horizons New Season

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      The company’s 2023-24 lineup includes works by Michael R. Jackson, Anna K. Jacobs, David Adjmi and Will Butler of Arcade Fire.Playwrights Horizons will present three large-scale productions and three solo works as part of its eclectic lineup for its 2023-24 season, with a range of genres and price points, the company announced on Tuesday.“These last few years are still asking us to pivot and be creative in ways we didn’t know we’d be asked to be,” said Adam Greenfield, the artistic director for Playwrights Horizons, who added that the company has had to scale back on producing new and commissioned works because of budgetary constraints.“Our job is to put as much new writing as possible in front of people,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out how to do more with less.”“Teeth,” based on the horror comedy film about an evangelical teenage girl with toothed genitalia — which the critic Stephen Holden called a “twisted sex-education film,” “quasi-feminist fable” and an “outrageous stunt” — will make its stage premiere in February.The musical production, which has been in the works since before the pandemic, and which Greenfield called “an examination of ancient misogyny,” is written by Michael R. Jackson (“A Strange Loop”) and Anna K. Jacobs, and will be choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly and directed by Sarah Benson, who will soon be leaving her leadership role at Soho Rep.“It’s bigger than any room that can try to contain it,” Greenfield said. “It’s incredibly fun and incredibly irreverent and brilliantly stupid and stupidly brilliant.”The season will kick off in October with the world premiere of David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic,” with original music by the Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, about a band whose members keep clashing while creating a new album. Set over two recording sessions, with fragments of the in-progress songs teased throughout, the show is “a valentine and a cautionary tale to the act of creation itself,” Greenfield said.The 2023-24 season will also feature three solo works written and performed by the playwrights. Milo Cramer’s “School Pictures,” which premiered at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia in November, is a musical journal of song-poems that present a portrait of the New York City education system. Alexandra Tatarsky’s “Sad Boys in Harpy Land,” which recently ran at the Abrons Art Center, is a clown cabaret about a young woman who thinks she is a small German boy who thinks he is a tree. The comedian Ikechukwu Ufomadu will perform his stand-up act, “Amusements,” a mix of storytelling, music and multimedia, which will also make an appearance at Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer.Presented in repertory, the solo performances will begin previews in November; tickets will be offered at a discounted rate.Rounding out the season is Abe Koogler’s “Staff Meal,” a comedic play, directed by Morgan Green, about a wait staff working to keep service running smoothly at a mysterious New York City restaurant while the world falls apart. Previews begin next April.Playwrights Horizons will also present a slate of programming with the Movement Theater Company, a troupe dedicated to developing and producing new work by artists of color. The residency begins in May 2024.“I think people are craving variety,” Greenfield said. “This new season speaks to that cultural shift.” More