Self Esteem: How David Hare’s ‘Teeth ’n’ Smiles’ Still Bites in 2024
The first time Rebecca Lucy Taylor read David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth ’n’ Smiles, she says, her “mind was blown.” “I couldn’t believe it,” says the artist better known to music fans as Self Esteem. “The way I feel about my actual life is so mirrored in this play. It just mirrors what the music industry today is like.”
That’s a surprising sentiment, given the play’s setting. Teeth ’n’ Smiles unfolds in 1969, chronicling the implosion of a band amidst drugs, alcohol, and backstage violence at a Cambridge University May ball – an event Hare says was inspired by a “grumpy, angry, miserable” Manfred Mann he witnessed while a student at Jesus College. The play grapples with debates surrounding the late-60s countercultural “acid dream” and the belief in rock music as a force for social change. Still, it feels less a product of its era and more a reflection of the disillusionment brewing in the mid-70s, when the countercultural promise had faded.
The original 1975 production at the Royal Court, starring Helen Mirren as vocalist Maggie Frisby, was a hit. “My memory of it in 1975 is that it blew such a hole in the respectability of the Royal Court, which was a particularly puritanical theatre,” Hare recalls. “It really shook the plaster off the ceiling and people came out exhilarated.” Yet, Hare told an interviewer in the mid-90s he didn’t expect a revival, believing the play was too deeply rooted in a specific time.
Taylor, who is playing Frisby in the current West Complete revival and has likewise contributed fresh music and lyrics, disagrees. She believes Teeth ’n’ Smiles resonates beyond its period setting, touching on universal truths about the music industry – the “mundanity and weirdness” of touring, and a historical lack of support for performers. “The word at the time was ‘casualties’,” Hare acknowledges, referencing the fates of artists like Brian Jones and Janis Joplin.
Taylor sees parallels between the play’s themes and the present day. “The disillusionment – I feel like something is dying that I grew up believing in,” she explains. “I thought, six years ago, that something would change, politically. I’m a big liberal lefty idealist, and I think we thought we might gain somewhere, and now I very much feel like we won’t. I thought that working hard and being a good musician would be enough, but it hasn’t 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’t be more extinct if I tried, now. You can produce the most mediocre album in the world, but if there’s enough money and buzzy marketing and a TikTok dance, you’ll do better than I’m doing.”
Hare cites several inspirations for the play, including a Manfred Mann concert he attended as a student, his time with the travelling theatre company Portable Theatre, and his own skepticism towards the 60s counterculture. He admired the dismantling of 1950s social rigidity but didn’t share the belief in imminent revolution. He also felt existing musicals attempted to exploit rock music’s energy, and sought a theatrical approach that allowed rock music to exist on its own terms. “So a play where you see the set that the band play, and then you identify 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.”
Interestingly, Teeth ’n’ Smiles seems to foreshadow the arrival of punk. One song is a frantic-paced number called “Bastards,” while another, “Last Orders on the Titanic,” echoes a lyric from Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” later adopted by punk journalist Mick Farren.
The play even drew the attention of Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, who attended a performance and contacted Hare afterward. “He loved it, he thought it was just heaven,” Hare says. “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.”
While Taylor believes 2026 shares similarities with 1975, she’s uncertain whether another punk-like disruption is imminent. Nevertheless, she finds inspiration in Maggie, who, despite her flaws, remains clear-eyed and fearless. “She gives me hope. Maggie can see it’s not working, it’s not going to operate, it’s all bullshit. But her thirst for experience is something I remember feeling, and I must worship that feeling to keep it in mind. It’s very seductive to stop searching for experience.” She adds, with a laugh, “I went to the Brit awards on Saturday and it was quite difficult for me to be in Maggie’s headspace. The red carpet was quite hairy.”
Hare admits to being apprehensive about how audiences will receive Teeth ’n’ Smiles after 50 years. “I really don’t know what they’ll make of it now. I’m absolutely terrified. The energy of it is quite frightening, it’s quite alarming.”
Taylor, however, embraces the discomfort. “I love it, though. I want people to be uncomfortable.”
Teeth ’n’ Smiles is at Duke of York’s theatre, London, until .