Laughing Through the Novocaine

Why Drilled! The Final Term? feels uncomfortably right on time

by Avery Anderson

There’s something uniquely American about realizing your country is falling apart while reclined in a dentist’s chair.

That moment — mouth open, powerless, fluorescent lights overhead — is the unlikely starting point for Drilled! The Final Term?, the sharp, ridiculous political musical now returning in an updated 2026 version. Set inside a corporate dental office, Drilled! skewers right- and left-wing extremism, the health care system, corporate greed, and our addiction to outrage — all while singing about teeth.

Yes. Teeth.

“I had a very effusive dental hygienist named Judy,” writer and director Bill Leavengood said, recalling the show’s origin story. “She said, ‘You should write a musical set in a dentist office.’ And I said, ‘That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.’”

A few days later, the idea wouldn’t let go.

“I woke up and I had this inspiration,” Leavengood said. “It actually could be a fantastic way for me to write a satire of right- and left-wing fanatics, of the health care system, of the current crazy government — and dentists.”

Politics, but Make It Absurd

First staged in 2019 and returning after sold-out runs, COVID detours, and multiple rewrites, Drilled! follows Larry the Laborer — a blue-collar everyman who is inadvertently turned into a conservative icon. When his life implodes — jobless, loveless, and suffering from a brutal toothache — Larry ends up at the only dental conglomerate that will accept his insurance.

What unfolds is not a lecture.

“It is absolutely not a polemic,” Leavengood said. “It isn’t a bang-the-drum, soapbox kind of show. Parts of it are just ridiculous and hysterical and bizarre. There’s a song called ‘The Autoerotic Asphyxiation Waltz,’ for God’s sake.”

That commitment to ridiculousness is intentional. While many artists are stepping away from political work altogether, Drilled! leans into satire as a pressure valve — an hour of controlled chaos designed to release what most of us are carrying around anyway.

“I am only aware of two people who walked out of the theater really pissed off,” Leavengood said. “One way, way left. One way, way right. Everyone else just said, ‘This is fun and funny as hell, and we’re making fun of how ridiculous we are.’”

Why Bring It Back Now?

The show was originally written in the aftermath of Trump’s first election — a moment of collective shock that demanded response. Since then, the news cycle has only grown louder, stranger, and more exhausting, forcing Drilled! to stay nimble.

“There’s a song that was called Bush and Trump back in 2019,” Leavengood said. “Then I changed it to Musk and Trump. Then Elon Musk disappeared from the scene before we got the show going, so I had to change it again.”

Topical by design, Drilled! knows it has an expiration date.

“I absolutely think people would get a kick out of this show all over the country,” Leavengood said. “But it would have to be done within the next year and a half. After that, you’d really have to rewrite it.”

Which is exactly why it lands now — not because politics are new, but because fatigue is.

The Middle Is the Joke — and the Point

For all its noise, Drilled! isn’t actually about winning arguments. It’s about what happens when the loudest voices take over the room.

“It’s about making fun of people way to the right and way to the left that tend to be controlling the way the world is run,” Leavengood said, “versus the eighty percent in the middle who would like to just get along and move forward.”

At the center is an unlikely romance between Larry and a dental office receptionist — two people who disagree politically but decide that coexistence might still be possible.

“That is what I want people to take from this,” Leavengood said. “That it is time for us to meet in the middle.”

Three Actors, a Full Political Ecosystem

That balancing act — between chaos and clarity, satire and sincerity — is carried by a tight three-person cast doing the work of a full political ecosystem. Quint Paxton takes on the dual roles of Dr. Longley and Ted, embodying both corporate self-satisfaction and ideological extremism with equal bite. Jonathan Dacres anchors the show as Larry, the accidental icon whose unraveling becomes the audience’s way in. And Bailee McQueen, a frequent Leavengood collaborator, ricochets between Sentra, Phylia, and Reinigung — moving fluidly from moderation to fanaticism without ever losing the comic edge that keeps the show buoyant.

Don’t Let the Word “Political” Scare You

Leavengood is clear about one thing: audiences shouldn’t confuse Drilled! with homework.

“I don’t want to scare an audience away thinking, ‘I’m going to have to listen to some guy’s political leanings,’” he said. “The show is just fun and funny as hell.”

And maybe that’s the most subversive thing about it.

In an era when everything feels teeth-grindingly serious, Drilled! The Final Term? offers something radical: laughter, surprise, and the reminder that even in the middle of a mess — sometimes especially there — we’re still capable of finding common ground.

Preferably with Novocaine.

If You Go

When: January 21-24 at 7:30 PM. January 24 & 25 at 3:00 PM

Where: The Studio@620

Get tickets: https://thestudioat620.org/events/drilled/