Teeth 'n' Smiles at a glance

Show
Teeth 'n' Smiles
Venue
Duke of York's Theatre, West End
Address
104 St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4BG
Nearest station
Leicester Square (2 min walk); Charing Cross (5 min)
Genre
Play with original music (drama / rock)
Running time
Approximately 2 hours 20 minutes, including one interval
Age guidance
14+ (drug references, simulated needle use, smoking on stage)
Dates
13 March – 6 June 2026 (12-week limited season)
Press night
25 March 2026
NT Live filming
Wednesday 27 May 2026 (both performances) — some restricted views
Price range
From £24.40 (typically £24.40–£137)
Writer
David Hare
Director
Daniel Raggett
Music & lyrics
Nick Bicât (music), Tony Bicât (lyrics), with new additional music by Rebecca Lucy Taylor

Expert Review: Teeth 'n' Smiles at the Duke of York's

3.8
★★★★☆

LTH Expert Rating

Reviewed by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 11 May 2026.

The Verdict

The central question about this revival is whether Rebecca Lucy Taylor — better known as the Mercury-nominated singer Self Esteem — can carry it. The answer is unequivocally yes. Her Maggie Frisby is the reason to book: a performance with the swagger, anger and damage of a real rock front-woman, channelled into Hare's furious lead role with what feels like an unusual amount of personal investment. The musical numbers, performed live by the cast as the fictional band The Skins, are the show's most thrilling sequences. Don't Let the Bastards Come Near You is the song you'll be humming on the Tube home.

The harder question is whether the play itself holds up at fifty. Hare has been frank that Teeth 'n' Smiles hasn't aged as well as Plenty or Skylight, and the critical consensus on this revival is broadly that. In 1975 the play landed as a state-of-the-nation portrait of the end of the sixties dream; in 2026, after punk and grunge and Spinal Tap and Stereophonic (which played this very theatre last year), it can feel longer than its 2h 20m. The script's monologues sometimes drift; the second act loses momentum the first act builds. But Daniel Raggett's staging — band on stage, audience treated almost as gig-goers — earns its energy, Chloe Lamford's set is properly grimy, and Phil Daniels makes some intractable speeches land. Worth seeing for Taylor and the band scenes; the production carries the play more than the other way around.

What Makes It Special

  • Rebecca Lucy Taylor / Self Esteem in her play debut. Taylor made her West End musical debut in Cabaret opposite Jake Shears in 2025; this is her first straight play. The transition is genuinely impressive — she's not just delivering a star turn, she's playing a role most stage actors would find demanding even without the singing.
  • Live music throughout. Nick and Tony Bicât's original 1975 songs are performed live by the cast as The Skins' three sets at the May Ball, with one new song — Maggie's Song — written by Taylor herself. The musical sequences are the production's most fully realised material.
  • Phil Daniels as Saraffian. Daniels — forever associated with Quadrophenia, more recently in House of the Dragon and Mike Bartlett's Cock — gives the show its centre of gravity as the band's weaselly manager. Some of Hare's longest, knottiest speeches are entrusted to him, and he sells them.
  • Daniel Raggett's staging. Following his Olivier-nominated Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Raggett configures the Duke of York's as both auditorium and venue — characters enter through the aisles, the band perform straight at the audience, and the boundary between play and gig is deliberately porous.
  • The Duke of York's pedigree for music-drama. Stereophonic, the Pulitzer-winning play about a fictional 70s band, played this same venue in 2025 to extraordinary acclaim. Teeth 'n' Smiles is in some ways the urtext — Hare wrote it 49 years before Stereophonic, and the family resemblance is striking.
  • NT Live filming on 27 May. Both Wednesday performances on 27 May will be filmed for NT Live's cinema release. If you want to be in the room for that, this is the date; if you'd prefer unobstructed sightlines, avoid it.

You'll love Teeth 'n' Smiles if you...

  • Are a Self Esteem fan and want to see her stretch as a stage actor
  • Loved Stereophonic and want to see a 50-year-old answer to it
  • Enjoy plays with live rock music played by the actors
  • Have any nostalgia for the end-of-the-sixties moment Hare is writing about
  • Want to be in the room for an NT Live filming (Wed 27 May)

It might not be for you if you...

  • Prefer plot-driven plays — this is a portrait, not a story
  • Find long monologues frustrating — the script has plenty of them
  • Are uncomfortable with simulated drug use, needles, and smoking on stage
  • Are bringing under-14s — the age guidance is firm
  • Want unobstructed sightlines on 27 May (NT Live cameras in the Stalls)

Best for

  • Self Esteem fans
  • Stereophonic fans
  • Music-drama lovers
  • David Hare followers
  • Older teens (14+)
  • Adult night out

Not the strongest fit for under-14s, audiences seeking traditional plot-driven drama, or anyone sensitive to depictions of drug use.

Critical Reception

Press night was 25 March 2026. The London critical reception has been mixed — broadly admiring of Rebecca Lucy Taylor's performance and the production's live music sequences, more sceptical about whether the script itself has aged well. Verified star ratings from the major UK publications:

  • WhatsOnStage ★★★★
  • Time Out ★★★
  • The Stage — mixed positive
  • The Reviews Hub ★★★
  • The Standard ★★
  • Theatre & Tonic ★★★

Source: published reviews of the West End production at the Duke of York's Theatre, March–April 2026. Critics broadly agreed Taylor and the band scenes are the production's strengths, with the script viewed as the limiting factor.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in Teeth 'n' Smiles?

It is summer 1969. The Skins, a minor rock band whose moment was three years ago, have been booked to play a Cambridge University May Ball. The student who booked them, Anson, is a medical undergraduate who thinks he's just secured the gig of the year. He hasn't. The band is at war with itself; their lead singer, Maggie Frisby, is at war with everyone.

The set-up

The first scenes establish the band: Saraffian, the band's manager, who knows exactly how disposable they all are; Inch, the roadie; Smegs, Peyote, Wilson, and Nash, the musicians; and at the centre, Maggie — once the band's reason for existing, now the reason it can't function. She arrives onstage carried in unconscious by her bandmates. The play is structured around the three sets the band will play during the night and the increasingly catastrophic backstage scenes between them.

The first set

The band play. Maggie performs. She is, the play makes clear, very good — her voice is the only reason any of these people have a career. Between sets, the band fight. Arthur — a former member of the band turned songwriter, now Maggie's ex — is trying to talk her into something she doesn't want to discuss. The class lines between the band and the students are immediately visible.

The second set

Things deteriorate. Anson, the medical student, has provided Maggie with drugs and has started to realise what kind of mistake that was. Saraffian launches into a long monologue about something that happened to him in the war — one of the script's most divisive sections — that is, depending on your reading, profound or interminable. The second set ends with Maggie incoherent.

The third set and the aftermath

The third set never properly happens. Maggie's behaviour at the gig has catastrophic consequences — for the band, for Anson, and for her own future. The play's ending is bleak but not nihilistic: Maggie chooses what she chooses, with full knowledge of the cost, and Hare gives her the dignity of meaning it. Taylor's Maggie's Song — Taylor's new contribution to the score — lands in this section.

Why the play matters

Hare was 28 when he wrote Teeth 'n' Smiles in 1975, inspired by watching Manfred Mann play a university ball at his own Cambridge. The play arrived as one of the first serious British dramas to take rock music seriously, six years before The Wall, two years before punk broke. Its reputation rests on its prescience — the figure of the burned-out, drug-damaged front-woman is now familiar; in 1975 it was new. The 50th anniversary revival foregrounds that lineage, with Self Esteem's Maggie standing in for everyone from Janis Joplin to Amy Winehouse.