{"id":491346,"date":"2026-03-23T19:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491346\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T19:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:15:08","slug":"it-shook-the-plaster-off-the-ceiling-self-esteem-and-david-hare-on-reviving-rock-romp-teeth-n-smiles-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491346\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It shook the plaster off the ceiling\u2019: Self Esteem and David Hare on reviving rock romp Teeth \u2018n\u2019 Smiles | Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time Rebecca Lucy Taylor read David Hare\u2019s 1975 play Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles, she says, her \u201cmind was blown\u201d. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d says the artist better known to music fans as Self Esteem<\/a>. \u201cThe way I feel about my actual life is so mirrored in this play. It just mirrors what the music industry today is like.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a sense, that\u2019s a surprising thing to say. You could view Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles as something of a period piece. Set in 1969, it is the saga of a band imploding in a mass of drugs, alcohol and violence backstage at a Cambridge May ball \u2013 inspired, Hare says, by the experience of seeing a \u201cgrumpy, angry, miserable\u201d Manfred Mann going through the motions at a similar event while he was a student at Jesus College. There is debate among the band\u2019s members about the late-60s countercultural \u201cacid dream\u201d, and the attendant belief in rock music as a revolutionary force capable of inciting social change. But the play seems less a product of the era in which it is set than that in which it was written. It is soaked in the disillusionment and broiling discontent of the mid-70s, when the countercultural dream was unequivocally over.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI\u2019m absolutely terrified. The energy of this play is quite frightening<\/p>\n

It certainly struck a chord with audiences at the time. The original production, which premiered at the Royal Court theatre and starred Helen Mirren as the band\u2019s vocalist, Maggie Frisby, was a hit. \u201cMy memory of it in 1975 is that it blew such a hole in the respectability of the Royal Court, which was a very puritanical theatre,\u201d says Hare. \u201cIt really shook the plaster off the ceiling and people came out exhilarated.\u201d Still, the playwright told an interviewer in the mid-90s that Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles was so \u201cin touch with the mood of a particular time\u201d that he didn\u2019t expect it ever to be revived.<\/p>\n

\u2018People came out exhilarated\u2019 \u2026 Helen Mirren as Maggie, with Andrew Dickson and Hugh Fraser, in the 1975 Royal Court production. Photograph: Donald Cooper\/Alamy<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the point, says Taylor, who is playing Frisby in a West End revival<\/a> \u2013 and has also added extra music and lyrics. It\u2019s not just that the play touches on some universal truths about pop music, although it undoubtedly does \u2013 among them what she calls the \u201cmundanity and weirdness\u201d of life on tour, and the continuing lack of any duty of care towards performers. \u201cThe word at the time was \u2018casualties\u2019,\u201d nods Hare. \u201cBrian Jones, Janis Joplin or whoever \u2013 they were all just \u2018casualties\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also that Taylor thinks Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles was written in an era not unlike our own. \u201cThe disillusionment \u2013 I feel like something is dying that I grew up believing in,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought, six years ago, that something would change, politically. I\u2019m a big liberal lefty idealist, a real Fuck Boris-head, and I think we thought we might get somewhere, and now I very much feel like we won\u2019t. Obviously I\u2019ll have a second wave at some point, but at the moment it\u2019s hard. I thought that working hard and being a good musician would be enough, and it hasn\u2019t been, because of TikTok and AI and the conveyor-belt nature of music now. I believe in the album format, I believe in 12 tracks that take you through something. I couldn\u2019t be more extinct if I tried, now. You can make the most mediocre album in the world, but if there\u2019s enough money and buzzy marketing and a fucking TikTok dance, you\u2019ll do better than I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting next to her in the cafe of an east London rehearsal space, Hare says the play had a number of inspirations. There was his memory of the Manfred Mann gig, and of the summer he spent as a member of Portable Theatre<\/a>, a travelling company touring England in a van. \u201cThere were seven men and one woman: an actress of incredible composure and integrity who had to cope with this constant barrage of male humour, which was really what we were all using to get around the country. It was totally exhausting for us and I imagine quite a challenge for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018A sloppy, dirty, funny play\u2019 \u2026 Self Esteem as Maggie Frisby. Photograph: Helen Murray<\/p>\n

There was also his own equivocal view of the 60s counterculture. He loved everything that was being done to destroy the rigidity of 1950s bourgeois society, which \u201cI had grown up in and knew to be incredibly repressive, particularly sexually\u201d, but he didn\u2019t share the belief that a revolution was on its way. Nor that, \u201cthrough taking drugs, society would be threatened and changed\u201d. And he had a dissatisfaction with the vogue for musicals that \u201ctried to hitch a ride on rock music\u2019s energy\u201d: Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar et al. \u201cI thought theatre ought to be able to survive on its own terms. So a play where you see the set that the band play, and then you find out what happens in between, seemed to me a way of having rock music in a play without cheating. It just seemed such a perfect format.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the benefit of hindsight, the most startling thing about Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles is what Hare calls the \u201cmodestly prophetic\u201d way it seems to foresee the arrival of punk. One of the songs is a frantic-paced number called Bastards; the title of another, Last Orders on the Titanic, weirdly presages The Titanic Sails at Dawn<\/a>, a quote from Bob Dylan\u2019s Desolation Row repurposed by journalist Mick Farren for a famous punk-anticipating essay published in the NME a few months after Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles opened.<\/p>\n

\u2018Malcolm McLaren loved it. He was charming and obviously a conman\u2019 \u2026 Hare. Photograph: Sophia Evans\/The Observer<\/p>\n

The one thing that excites both the band and their audience in the play is an act of nihilistic, violent destruction. \u201cThat was the best night I\u2019ve had in years,\u201d enthuses one previously torpid band member in its wake. Most startling of all are the similarities between the band\u2019s manager, Saraffian (played by Phil Daniels in the revival), and Malcolm McLaren<\/a>, the manager of the Sex Pistols. Just as McLaren was, Saraffian is obsessed with the 50s British pop world of manager Larry Parnes<\/a>, and revels in his image as an avaricious conman while claiming to have a higher purpose involving disrupting the social order.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it wasn\u2019t entirely coincidence. When the play opened in September 1975, Hare had no idea what was fomenting at the other end of Kings Road from the Royal Court, where McLaren and Vivienne Westwood\u2019s shop Sex was located and the Sex Pistols were gathering<\/a>. But McLaren and Westwood were certainly aware of Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles. \u201cThey came to see it,\u201d nods Hare. \u201cMalcolm loved it, he thought it was just heaven. He got in touch with me afterwards and talked to me a lot. He loved it because he could see the way the play was going, which was heading towards the punk thing. He was both extremely charming and so obviously a conman I would not have trusted him for a second.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite her belief that 2026 is not unlike 1975, Taylor isn\u2019t sure that another punk-like disruption is coming any time soon. \u201cI mean, I\u2019ll say yes today, but catch me on a different day and I\u2019d say no,\u201d she smiles. Still, she feels inspired by the character of Maggie, who on the one hand is a drunken liability but, on the other, is by some distance the play\u2019s most clear-eyed and fearless character. \u201cShe gives me hope. Maggie can see it\u2019s not working, it\u2019s not going to work, it\u2019s all bullshit. But her thirst for experience is something I remember feeling, and I must worship that feeling to keep it in mind. It\u2019s very seductive to stop searching for experience \u2013 I bang my drum all the time about women not having to choose that idea of happy-ever-after that\u2019s gone before us for millennia, then even I succumb to the comforts of having a nice boyfriend that my mum and dad like. But Maggie doesn\u2019t.\u201d She laughs. \u201cI went to the Brit awards<\/a> on Saturday and it was quite difficult for me to be in Maggie\u2019s headspace. The red carpet was quite hairy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Self Esteen with Aysha Kala, Roman Asde and Christopher Patrick Nolan in the play. Photograph: Helen Murray<\/p>\n

For his part, Hare is unsure how what he once called \u201ca sloppy, dirty, funny play about hippies behaving badly\u201d will be received 50 years on. \u201cI really don\u2019t know what they\u2019ll make of it now. I sit there going, \u2018I\u2019m absolutely terrified.\u2019 The energy of it is quite frightening, it\u2019s quite alarming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor nods enthusiastically. \u201cI love it, though. I want people to be uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles is at Duke of York\u2019s theatre, London<\/a>, until 6 June<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first time Rebecca Lucy Taylor read David Hare\u2019s 1975 play Teeth \u2019n\u2019 Smiles, she says, her \u201cmind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-491346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}