Adaptation

I saw the musical TEETH last week in New York. Super funny, campy, bright. I loved it. Fingers crossed that it'll translate to a successful Broadway run.

Coincidentally, I watched the original movie (Teeth (2008)) only a couple months ago for my podcast Random Horror 9. Also funny and campy. So needless to say, I was curious just how it would translate into a stage musical.

And it was quite different. The character names are mostly the same, and the basic premise (Christian-abstinence-focused teenage girl has vagina dentata. Bloody hilarity ensues) is the same. But the relationships are different. The antagonist half-brother is different. The musical takes place in 2024, not 2008.

Most notably, the characters of the father and the pastor have been merged into a single character. In the movie, both of these characters are a bit innocuous. In the musical, the unified character of FATHER is a real villain.

The purist in me didn't want them to change this already delightful (if also super unnerving) film. The only major complaint I had about the movie was the ending, which has a bit of an exaggerated #GirlBoss vibe to it. And the musical took that and fucking RAN WITH IT.

So the one thing I wanted them to change for the musical, they actually chose to emphasize and make bigger. And to my surprise, I thought it worked incredibly well.

I'm not trying to write a review of the musical TEETH. Rather, I wanted to jot down my thoughts on adaptation. Some of my least favorite adaptation have been ones that tried to remain faithful to the original text. They are beholden to plot points and character beats that are effective in a different medium.

We know this to be true: what works on the page rarely works on the stage. In the case of TEETH, both film and theater are visual mediums, but the type of close-up, hyperrealism of film can't really be captured with the distant intimacy of live performance.

In theater, your audience is in the same room as you. Beyond your acting choices, you have to connect to your viewers on a personal level. They have to like you, even if they loathe you. Film is static, immutable. It always will be what it is, so its relatability is entirely on the audience. It needs to be showy and removed, so impressive as to be undeniable in its quality. Film must be tight and sharply-produced.

So when we adapt a movie for the stage, especially a story that is so gory and wild as TEETH, the love we feel for protagonist Dawn has to feel like a personal connection. The stakes have to be even higher (more dramatic!). So we ratchet up the danger. The brother is no longer just a fucking creep, but part of a misogynist, online incel community. The dad and pastor are no longer tertiary, ineffectual men, but a powerful symbol of the destructive force of Patriarchy.

Playwright Anna K. Jacobs listened to the heartbeat of the movie - a tale of empowerment empathy, not unlike a superhero origin story - and wrote a stage script that bulldozed the marble statues of film and in their place colorful puppets. And it's brilliant.

Where I'm at now is that adaptation of stories is really just 10% (or less) about accuracy/recognizability of the original script. The remaining 90% or so is evenly split between two things: 1) demonstrating a full understanding of what the original work wanted to say; and 2) writing for the medium, not the message.

If TEETH is remounted, I hope you have a chance to see it. It's fresh and invigorating, and maybe my favorite example of how to adapt a work across mediums.

-Jeffrey Cranor
Apr 29, 2024