The 2007 indie film Teeth is a horror comedy whose title and story is inspired by the folk tale of vagina dentata, whose etymology confirms that its meaning is exactly what you think it is. The movie did well critically, and intrigued a lot of people—including, it seems, A Strange Loop playwright Michael R. Jackson.
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According to Deadline, Teeth is getting a musical treatment, where Jackson will provide the lyrics and Anna K. Jacobs will provide the music. The two will also co-write and release a book based on the story, which they say will center on the young 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 musical is produced by Playwrights Horizons and previews of the show will begin in February 2024.
“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,” the theater company said according to Deadline, also adding that the stage version 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.”
These statements are all well and good, but I’m struggling to picture how the story of a woman who bites off certain appendages with her vagina will translate to the stage. Perhaps if I actually watch Teeth I’ll have a better sense of how it could work — it’s currently available to stream on Paramount+, the Roku Channel, Pluto, and Tubi, so plenty of places to see Mitchell Lichtenstein’s movie before the stage production’s premiere.
