Contemporary musicals love to shower their audiences with confetti during a triumphant finale. 

(For certain shows, I too feel like celebrating when the curtain finally drops.)

But Teeth utilizes confetti to physically immerse the audience in a vibe beyond the purely jubilant.

Late in this new off-Broadway musical, as its carnage turns into a full-out gender war, confetti rains over the auditorium. But it’s not your typical rainbow confetti; it’s a weird tar color, thicker and chunkier than the Party City standard. You can even feel it on your skin, which is unsettling.

Unsettling because it’s paired with mass dismemberment and seizure-inducing strobes on stage. In the midst of this overwhelming spectacle of carnal chaos, the confetti can be mistaken for bits and pieces of human flesh scattering over your body.

Only in a live setting can 4D effects subsume the audience in a story’s corporeal ick. 

And, on a thematic level, this warped confetti — celebratory, yet not — seems of a piece with Teeth’s examination of the perils in viewing the Dentata takeover’s murderous matriarchy as a triumph…