Produced by Wessex Grove and Gavin Kalin and directed by Daniel Raggett, it’s great to see a revival of David Hare’s 1975 Teeth ‘N’ Smiles in the West End 50 years after, as the playwright says, it “shook the plaster off the ceiling” at the hip Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square. This highly original play, which almost verges on being a musical, has a limited 12-week run at the Duke of York’s Theatre and unites actor, singer, musician and writer, Rebecca Lucy Taylor (AKA Self Esteem) with one of the great playwrights of the past century. Having starred in the Olivier award-winning Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club and won awards for her own albums ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ and ‘A Complicated Woman’, Taylor has contributed new songs to this revival of Teeth ‘N’ Smiles which are performed in addition to Nick and Tony Bicât’s original music and lyrics, with an anarchistic tone reflecting the emergence of Punk rock.
When the Rolling Stones were forced to play the Oxford University May Ball due to their manager having accepted the contract for a pittance before they became one of the most famous bands in the world, Hare was inspired to write an account of a similar evening; writing Teeth ‘N’ Smiles at speed just after his first son was born. Directing it himself under the nurturing artistic directorship of Nicholas Wright and Robert Kidd of the Royal Court Theatre, who selected the trailblazing work as being representative of the theatre’s new envelope-pushing direction, and knowing it would shake up their reputation, Hare was lucky enough to cast Helen Mirren as the original Maggie Frisby, a role for which she received huge acclaim. Legend has it that Keith Moon of The Who turned up drunk in Mirren’s dressing room, praising the show and was determined to join the cast on stage before being deterred by management.
Having written seven plays before Teeth ‘N’ Smiles, Hare described this landmark work as capturing the “Fag-end of idealism,” yet another look at British society which found him lauded as a distinctive new voice in theatre with his, “sloppy, dirty, funny play about hippies behaving badly.” This is a play about “utopianism when it turned sour” and “the stage people reach when they will do anything for an experience, and having originally enjoyed the vitality of the experience, they then become addicted to the experience.”
Maggie Frisby, the lead singer, is paralytically drunk and makes her first appearance on stage flung over a musician’s shoulder. The band is already an hour late and the students are growing restless, but no one is flapping other than event organiser, Anson (Roman Asde), a squeamish medical student who intends to drop-out after he graduates, and, in awe of the rock n’ roll lifestyle and hoping to interview Maggie when she can string a sentence together, gets more than he bargains for later on. The band, who tell Anson to take a seat, would be more concerned if Maggie was itching to go on. They assure him that she always performs at her best when she says that she can’t do it.
Set over the warm night of 9th June 1969 during the Jesus College, Cambridge May Ball, for which the band have been booked for a paltry £120, there’s “A great deal of Champagne, a good deal of hashish, some acid and a very little preludin. And the band still has three sets to play.” The audience are thrust into the backstage chaos of musicians coming and going, with no one batting an eyelid that lead singer Maggie is still comatose on Johnnie Walker before they eventually insist that college porter Snead (Christopher Patrick Nolan) dumps her into a bath; the audience giggling when he returns some time later with his hands covered in soap suds.
Chloe Lamford’s set design instantly captures the grungy atmosphere of life on the road, the tedium experienced by band members sprawled on sofas and so desperate to kill time waiting for the lead that they ask one another to name boring facts, the winner being the one who can name the most boring. On the other hand, bass guitarist Peyote (Jojo Macari) can think of no better way to amuse himself than by reaching for his heroin kit and shooting up; cue Macari’s utterly hilarious interpretation of being ‘high’, from laying flat-out on stage to climbing the rafters while Inch (Noah Weatherby), the lazy roadie, can barely be arsed to change a plug for a speaker.
Maggie, when she does appear, is armed with a bottle of scotch; hell-bent on numbing herself into oblivion, although no one ever finds out what exactly lies at the root of her pain. The rest of the musicians and especially Cockney band manager and promoter Saraffian (Phil Daniels) don’t give a f**k what torments her so long as she fulfils her contract, with the exception of her ex-lover, Arthur, played by a George Harrison-esque Michael Fox, whom Laura (Aysha Kala), the band’s publicist, tries and fails to win over. A play about how making a noise doesn’t resolve anything and highlighting that things naturally run their course, Arthur poses the question, “Why is everyone so frightened?”
Just like Taylor, the rest of the musicians in the cast are also reaching for the moon in this high energy production, still unique after half a century of plays that have never come anywhere close to Hare’s tribute to creative expression and human connection through live performance. There is no weak link in this fantastically well-cast production with Samuel Jordan as Smegs, the singer and lead guitarist who blows the roof off with ‘Don’t Let the Bastards Come Near You’, Bill Caple as Nash on drums and Michael Abubaker as Wilson on keyboard, while Taylor impresses with her powerful vocals, especially during the poetic ‘Maggie’s Song’, which she performs whilst strumming a guitar and sitting on the edge of the stage.
Taylor delivers a raw, yet tender performance of this fading Janis Joplin-esque character; a soul tormented by a relentless workload and barely any recognition. Besides leading an extremely talented cast, it’s clear that Rebecca Lucy Taylor is giving this role everything she’s got; an achievement for one night, let alone a twelve week run. In today’s sterile world where music originality and creative genius is under threat by AI, it’s nothing short of exhilarating to celebrate the vibrancy that rock and roll brought to the world.
Teeth ‘N’ Smiles at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 6th June 2026. For more information and tickets please visit the website. Production photos by Helen Murray.
