Review: Teeth ‘n’ Smiles

Rebecca Lucy Taylor blazes bright in the 50th anniversary revival of David Hare’s pop anarchy play

Before Stereophonic and Good Night, Oscar, we watched another musician leave it all on the West End stage. First debuting at the Royal Court in 1975, David Hare’s rebel play Teeth ‘n’ Smiles arrived at Wyndham’s Theatre in the spring of 1976. Fifty years later, Teeth ‘n’ Smiles returns to London, this time to play a limited run at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Revived are Maggie Frisbee and her band, as they cling to dying success. We follow them over the course of one night at Jesus College, Cambridge, staggering their way through the May Ball, with tensions slowly reaching boiling point.

Any role originated by Helen Mirren has to be a daunting one to step into. Luckily, Rebecca Lucy Taylor doesn’t step – she takes the thing at a run up into a careening dive, as convincing and honest a pop star crash out as there ever was. Better known as Self Esteem, Taylor’s own pop project is to a certain extent performance art, a distance preserved between Taylor and her onstage persona. Her Maggie Frisbee, by contrast, has begun to bring too much of herself onstage. Her deep-held discontent and disillusionment threatens not only to ruin her own life, but the lives of all her bandmates. Taylor plays Maggie not as a self-destructive artist who doesn’t care what wreckage she leaves in her wake, but as one who cares far too much, and who doesn’t dare stay sober long enough to look behind her.

The live music is a standout element, and Taylor’s performance as a floundering frontwoman entirely convincing, her immense vocal talent evident even as she comes apart. Hare’s script shines as it always has, fifty years not enough to make his quippy, jaded characters feel unfamiliar to us, and under Daniel Raggett’s capable hand they enjoy themselves emptily. Jojo Macari’s Peyote frolics in a ballgown, with neither foot in reality; Michael Abubakar’s Wilson is a retired rioter overly dismayed by a rip in his rock star jeans. Phil Daniels is excellent as Saraffian, both fatherly and slightly sinister. Also deserving of mention are Michael Fox’s slimy Arthur, even less sympathetic to a modern audience than he would have been fifty years ago but brilliantly played, and Roman Asde’s fastidious Anson, the medical student stroke aspiring journalist forever changed by his encounter with Maggie.

The play’s most moving moment is one of quiet, after police raids and fires, towards the end of the second act. Maggie sits with her guitar and plays a new composition, very simply moving. For the first time, she sings with conviction. Booted from her band and with very little left to hold onto, her protest music takes a different form – no wall of sound, only a woman who, rather than going quietly, chooses to play on.

Teeth ‘n’ Smiles is currently playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 6 June