NEW YORK — There’s bother lurking within the New Testomony Village church. What was as soon as a holy floor shepherded by a rapturous man merely often called Pastor (Steven Pasquale), mannequin evangelical teen Daybreak O’Keefe (Alyse Alan Louis) and her angelic group of Promise Keeper Ladies morphs right into a breeding floor for sin.Of their new musical “Enamel,” making its world premiere at off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons, writers Anna Ok. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson plunge proper into this darkish world, particularly the disgrace and insidious secrets and techniques that preside over it. The present explicitly presents acts of rape and assault that could be troublesome to observe (and even examine) for some. However “Enamel” is a brazen, distinctive, cackle-worthy slice of musical theater, even when, at instances, it stumbles from grace.In response to the Pastor’s teachings, virginity is the quickest technique to salvation, so younger girls on this quaint, fictional city of Eden should stay steadfast within the preservation of their “valuable reward.” However because the Promise Keeper teenagers’ carnal urges start to rise, that pledge of piety turns into tougher to uphold. Particularly when Daybreak’s boyfriend — a basketball star named Tobey (Jason Gotay) — appears that good rocking the jersey quantity 7 (the Bible’s variety of completion) on his chest.Jacobs and Jackson, as co-authors of the e book, cheekily weave such biblical allusions and well-liked Christian rhetoric into their satirical romp. Jackson — who earned the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for his breakout meta musical “A Unusual Loop” — intrepidly pens lyrics rife with surprising rhymes (“My panties are moist / however it’s not blood or sweat”) that director Sarah Benson encourages her ensemble to sing with zealous conviction.The musical turns the tenets of evangelicalism on its head, mocking the rigidity of modesty and purity tradition. Early on, Jacobs’s music even welcomes Christian rock into the soundscape, mixing it with American folks and brassy pop. The result’s the type of easy, swoonful music you would possibly count on from Natasha Bedingfield … if Natasha sang about her loins combusting.Louis is a good bodily comic and emotional expertise right here, expertly oscillating between Daybreak’s chasteness and her concupiscence; at factors, she even grinds on the church’s pink carpet flooring (aptly dank and decrepit due to scenic designer Adam Rigg) as if it’s going to give her orgasmic launch. Daybreak is so reliant on “the sting of disgrace in [her] physique” as an ethical compass that the character finds it complicated when she begins to really feel gravely in poor health, like one thing inside her is unsuitable. And that is when “Enamel” begins to attract blood.These accustomed to director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 horror movie of the identical identify, the idea for this musical, will already know Daybreak’s analysis: vagina dentata, or vagina with tooth. For hundreds of years, this legendary dysfunction served as a sexist exaggeration of the serpentine “evils” we ladies maintain between our legs. With their musical, Jacobs and Jackson try to reclaim the misogynistic delusion, positioning Daybreak as an antiheroine: The fangs solely come out when she is raped or assaulted.Sharp. Witty. Considerate. Join the Fashion Memo publication.The primary few instances that occurs, she blames herself — a pointed critique of society’s Ebook of Genesis-old behavior of shouldering girls with all of the accountability for males’s sins. However after falling prey to 1 too many lecherous interactions, together with along with her incel stepbrother Brad (Will Connolly), Daybreak’s female rage takes over and she or he transitions from cherubic church chief to murderous siren.Benson is in full management of all of it, steering her ensemble by means of these tonal shifts — from fundamentalist satire to sobering illustration of sexual violence to castration bacchanal. Jacobs’s rating races to comply with swimsuit, evolving right into a cacophony of punk rock numbers that energetically gasoline Daybreak and the Promise Keeper Ladies (at this level, extra just like the Phallus Killer Ladies) on their rampage.Whereas it’s all raucous, campy enjoyable, one can’t assist however crave extra for our protagonist. Pastor, Brad, Tobey — these males govern each side of Daybreak’s internal and outer life. As deliciously triumphant as it’s to see her reject their affect, sever members and spearhead “feminocratic liberation,” what sort of girl is she in between that overwhelming guilt and seething fury? “Enamel” doesn’t know. Or if it does, it by no means opens its mouth to inform the remainder of us.Enamel, by means of April 14 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. One hour and 55 minutes with no intermission. playwrightshorizons.org.