‘I shook the plaster off the ceiling’: Self-esteem and David Hare on the rock revival of Teeth ‘n’ Smiles | platform

TThe first time Rebecca Lucy Taylor read David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth ‘n’ Smiles, she said, “Her mind was blown.” “I couldn’t believe it,” says the artist known to music fans as Self Esteem. “The way I feel about my actual life is reflected in this play. It just reflects what the music industry is like today.”

In a sense, this is a surprising thing to say. You can display Teeth ‘n’ Smiles as a piece of vintage art. Set in 1969, the film tells the story of a band imploding in a mass of drugs, alcohol and violence backstage at a gig in Cambridge in May – inspired, Hare says, by the experience of seeing an “angry, angry, miserable” Manfred Mann in action at a similar event when he was a student at Jesus College. There is debate among band members about the “acid dream” of the late 1960s counterculture, and the accompanying 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 of the era in which it was written. It is steeped in the disillusionment and intense discontent of the mid-1970s, when the dream of the counterculture ended unequivocally.

It certainly struck a chord with audiences at the time. The original production, which premiered at the Royal Court Theater and starred Helen Mirren as the band’s singer, Maggie Frisbie, was a huge success. “What I remember about 1975 is that it created a huge hole in the respectability of the Royal Court, which was a very orthodox theatre,” Hare says. “It actually shook the plaster off the ceiling and people came out ecstatic.” However, the playwright told an interviewer in the mid-1990s that Teeth ‘n’ Smiles was so “so in touch with the mood of a particular time” that he did not expect it to ever be revived.

But that’s the point, says Taylor, who plays Frisbee in the West End revival — and has also added more music and lyrics. It’s not just that the play touches on some universal truths about pop music, although it undoubtedly does – among them what she calls the “monotony and strangeness” of life on tour, and the persistent lack of any duty of care towards performers. “The word at the time was ‘victims,’” Hare nodded. “Brian Jones, Janis Joplin or anyone else – they were all just ‘victims’.”

Taylor also believes that Teeth ‘n’ Smiles was written in an era not unlike our own. “Disappointment — I feel like something I grew up believing is about to die,” she says. “I thought, six years ago, that something was going to change, politically. I’m an idealistic left-wing liberal, a real Boris head, and I think we thought we might get somewhere, and now I feel very much like we won’t. Obviously I’m going to have a second wave at some point, but at the moment it’s tough. I thought working hard and being a good musician would be enough, and it wasn’t, because of TikTok and artificial intelligence and the conveyor belt nature of music. “I believe in the album format, and I believe in 12 songs that take you through something. I couldn’t be more extinct if I tried, now you can make the most mediocre album in the world, but if there’s enough money, buzzy marketing, and a fucking TikTok dance, you’ll do a better job than I do. “

Sitting next to her in the café in the rehearsal area in east London, Hare says she had a number of inspirations for the play. There were his memories of a Manfred Mann gig, and a summer he spent as a member of Portable Theater, a traveling company touring England in a van. “There were seven men and one woman: an actress of incredible composure and integrity, who had to deal with this constant barrage of male humour, which is what we were all using to get around the country. It was absolutely exhausting for us and I imagine quite a challenge for her.”

There was also his ambiguous view on the counterculture of the 1960s. He loved everything that was being done to destroy the rigidity of bourgeois society in the 1950s, which “I grew up in and knew was incredibly repressive, especially sexually,” but he did not share the belief that revolution was on its way. Nor is it that “through drug use, society is exposed to threat and change.” He was dissatisfied with the popularity of musicals that “tried to capitalize on the energy of rock music”: Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and others. “I thought theater should be able to survive on its own terms. So a play where you see the set being played by the band, and then you find out what happens in between, seemed to me a way to get rock music into a play without cheating. It seemed like a perfect form.”

With the benefit of hindsight, the most surprising thing about Teeth ‘n’ Smiles is what Hare calls the “modestly prophetic” way in which it seems to anticipate the arrival of punk. One of the songs is a frenetic number called Bastards. Another title, Last Orders on the Titanic, oddly foreshadows The Titanic Sails at Dawn, a quote from Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row that journalist Mick Farren repurposed for a famously anticipatory punk article published in the NME a few months after Teeth ‘n’ Smiles opened.

The only thing that excites the band and their audience in the play is the violent, nihilistic act of destruction. “That was the best night I’ve had in years,” a previously lethargic band member said in the aftermath. Even more striking are the similarities between the band’s manager, Sarafian (played by Phil Daniels in the revival), and Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols. Just as McLaren was, Sarafyan was obsessed with the 1950s British pop world of manager Larry Barnes, reveling in his image as a greedy hustler while claiming to have a higher purpose that involved disrupting the social order.

Perhaps this was not a coincidence. When the play opened in September 1975, Hare had no idea what was happening at the other end of King’s Road from the Royal Court, where McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s sex shop was located and the Sex Pistols congregated. But McLaren and Westwood were certainly aware of Teeth ‘n’ Smiles. “They came to see her,” Hare nodded. “Malcolm loved it, he thought it was just heaven. He called me afterward and talked to me a lot. He loved it because he could see the way the play was going, which was going towards the punk thing. He was so charming and clearly a con man that I wouldn’t trust him for a moment.”

Although she believes 2026 is no different than 1975, Taylor isn’t sure another punk-like disruption will happen anytime soon. “I mean I’ll say yes today, but meet me another day and I’ll say no,” she smiles. However, she feels inspired by the character of Maggie, who is on the one hand a drunk, but on the other hand, the most articulate and courageous character in the play. “It gives me hope. Maggie can see that it doesn’t work, it won’t work, it’s all nonsense. But her thirst for experience is something I remember feeling, and I must worship that feeling to keep it in mind. It’s so tempting to stop looking for experience—beating my drum all the time about women not having to choose the idea of ​​happily ever after that predates us by millennia, and then even I surrender to the comforts of having a nice boyfriend.” Which mom and dad love, but Maggie doesn’t. She laughs. “I went to the Brit Awards on Saturday and it was very difficult for me to be in Maggie’s shoes. The red carpet was full of hair.”

For his part, Hare is unsure how what he once described as a “dirty, dirty, funny play about hippies behaving badly” will be received 50 years later. “I really don’t know what they’re going to do now. I sat there saying, ‘I’m so terrified.’ The energy from him is so scary, it’s so unsettling.”

Taylor nodded enthusiastically. “But I like it. I want people to feel uncomfortable.”