Book and Music by Anna K. Jacobs
Book and Lyrics by Michael R. Jackson
Based on the Screenplay TEETH by Mitchell Lichtenstein
Dawn O’Keefe is an evangelical Christian teen with a powerful secret not even she understands – when men violate her, her body bites back. That’s not a metaphor. Co-created with Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winner Michael R. Jackson (A STRANGE LOOP), 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.
Following its sold-out, extended run at Playwrights Horizons, TEETH is still hungry for more. Beginning this fall, the “brazen, cackle-worthy new musical” (The Washington Post) is setting up permanent residence at New World Stages!
TEETH features a cast of 11 (7W, 4M).
Audio
Teeth Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording is available to stream or buy on all major platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, and Broadway Records.
Preview
Gallery
TEETH at Playwrights Horizons
Photos by Chelcie Parry
Press
“It’s a Gory blast! A bloody, bawdy musical with banging songs.”
“TEETH feels like the musical equivalent of driving a spike-covered Mad Max car across the desert while getting chased by war boys on their way to Valhalla. It’s a rush — and it’s also a pitch-dark examination of the very real chokehold of Christofascist ideology in America.”
Sara Holdren, Vulture
“It offers a winking subversiveness and plenty of laughs, especially in the catchy pop-rock tunes with their sharp, smutty rhymes.”
Jesse Green, The New York Times
“A bloody, buzzy Off Broadway splash.”
Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times
“A brazen, cackle-worthy musical. All raucous, campy fun.”
“Early on, Jacobs’s music even welcomes Christian rock into the soundscape, mixing it with American folk and brassy pop. The result is the kind of simple, swoonful music you might expect from Natasha Bedingfield … if Natasha sang about her loins combusting.”
Brittani Samuel, The Washington Post
“Dark, sharp and unflinching.”
“In less confident hands, Teeth might have been a one-note exercise in violent misandrist fantasy. But Jacobs’s music and Jackson’s lyrics give the story range. It’s not just that the songs are consistently varied and clever, with different voices for each character. (Pasquale’s Tin Pan Alley ditty as the gynecologist—this show’s version of Little Shop’s “Dentist!”—is one of several standouts.) It’s also that the authors, in expanding and modernizing Lichtenstein’s movie, take time to dissect the ways in which men are also victimized by patriarchy: Dawn’s confidant Ryan (Jared Loftin, nailing it) is desperate not to be gay; her stepbrother and possible nemesis, Brad (Will Connolly), is buffeted between Father God, the deity of his dad’s religion, and the Godfather, an Aussie virtual-reality life coach who condemns “the feminocracy.” Even as it exalts the power of women, Teeth slices into manhood down to the root.
Adam Feldman, TIme Out
“A brilliant, must-see musical.”
Zachary Stewart, Theatermania
History
Productions:
- New World Stages (directed by Sarah Benson, choreography by Raja Feather Kelly), NYC, 2024
- Playwrights Horizons (directed by Sarah Benson, choreography by Raja Feather Kelly), NYC, 2024
Originally developed at Musical Theatre Factory. TEETH was developed with the support of Ars Nova. TEETH was developed, in part, at the 2016 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at MASS MoCA. TEETH was developed during a residency at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Musical Theater Conference in 2018. TEETH was presented at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals in 2019.