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Sunday, December 8, 2024

Don't Feed the...

At the end of the iconic Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors, audience members are entreated, "Don't feed the plants!" At the end of another camped-up Off-Broadway film adaptation, Teeth, the audience might be wary of feeding... something else.

Little Shop was inspired by a cult horror/comedy film. Similarly, Teeth is adapted from Mitchell Lichtenstein's 2007 cinematic tale of a young woman who discovers vagina dentata are more than just an ancient legend. (She later decides to embrace her newfound biological "gift" from Mother Nature.)

The musical was penned by Anna K. Jacobs, who also composed the score for the Andy Warhol musical POP!, and Michael R. Jackson, best known for writing A Strange Loop. From what I've read, it departs significantly from the film, but I'm not a fan of blood-and-gore movies, so I confess to not having seen the original.

Blood-and-gore stage plays, on the other hand, are a favorite of mine. I loved, for instance, the production of Tamburlaine I saw in Brooklyn where they had to mop up the stage blood at intermission. Teeth has no intermission, but it does have a "splash zone" where audiences are warned they might get covered with blood. All audience members should also watch out for falling phalli.

The world of Teeth is filled with Promise Keeper Girls who slut-shame anyone who engages in premarital sex and Truthseeker incels who are intent on bringing down the "feminocracy" by any means necessary. That there is no middle ground is probably the point, but this makes it difficult to sympathize with any of the characters, unlike Little Shop, where we fall in love with the leads.

Teeth is currently playing at New World Stages. Jacobs's score is tuneful, and some of Jackson's lyrics are quite clever, but if you have an aversion to stage blood, you might want to bring a poncho.