FringeReview UK 2026
Teeth ‘n’ Smiles
Wessex Grove, Gavin Kalin Productions and partners
Genre: Comedic, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Historical, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Musical Theatre, New Writing, Political, Theatre
Venue: Duke of York’s Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
How does a show – not quite a musical, not quite a play, say anything now? True it spawned a genre (Conor McPherson’s Girl From the North Country, Charlotte Jones’ Redlands furnishing just two examples) but has it been overtaken, or the opening of a well-worn seam? It burns, in fact more brightly than many of its successors, with ragged edges catching. Teeth’n’Smiles directed by Daniel Raggett runs at the Duke of York’s Theatre till June 13.
As Teeth ‘n’ Smiles ends, we’re left to feel the long withdrawing roar of the 1960s, and the bleaker horizons and disillusion Hare – and, presciently Maggie – saw by 1975. A must-see.
Review
It’s 51 years since Hare Teeth’n’Smiles premiered at the Royal Court, and literally set it alight. Again. How does a show – not quite a musical, not quite a play, say anything now? True it spawned a genre (Conor McPherson’s Girl From the North Country, Charlotte Jones’ Redlands furnishing just two examples) but has it been overtaken, or the opening of a well-worn seam? It burns, in fact more brightly than many of its successors, with ragged edges catching. Teeth’n’Smiles directed by Daniel Raggett runs at the Duke of York’s Theatre till June 6.
Taking place specifically on one night at Jesus College Cambridge’s May Ball on June 9th 1969, it’s also an act of nostalgia. 1975’s jaundiced take on a failed revolution is retroactively fed back by the central character Maggie Frisby (Rebecca Lucy Taylor), lead singer of The Skins (she immediately quips of the Four Skins without her); who talks of 1968’s failures rather presciently.
And it’s a band straining at boredom, the lack or plenitude of drugs, and Maggie’s own discontent. It’s led by ex-Jesus music student Arthur (an understated but plangent Michael Fox), Maggie’s ex and the band’s songwriter. Maggie herself though strains not only at Arthur’s devotion – his new girlfriend rightly feels sidelined – but at the material. Not in itself. It’s just she’s done this non-chick thing of acquiring a voice of her own.
Taylor naturally not only blazes through the central role, but adds a song of her own, ‘Maggie’s Song’ and revises elements of ‘My Sour Blood’, co-written by Hare’s Cambridge contemporaries, Nick Bicat and Tony Bicat. Edging the songs she sings (not all of them) to her own tessitura and style, Taylor reinjects the music with a new authenticity. Though it shows how little pop music has changed in some ways since 1975 pretending to be 1969. The Bicats are impressive: the fourth song ‘Don’t Let The Bastards Come Near You’ is still memorable and an earworm you won’t forget quickly. It helps it’s played as the outro over speakers at the end. ‘Last Orders’ too is a fine exuent.
As for Arthur’s return to his alma mater, Maggie’s already peeling away, and the band themselves are mainlining solo spots with a spot of drug-taking: the one thing Maggie never does. She drinks instead. It doesn’t help the manager Saraffian (a sourly magnificent Phil Daniel) can see quite why Maggie mightn’t fit anymore.
Arthur’s already enjoyed historic run-ins with Head Porter Smead (Christopher Patrick Nolan, though Matt Ray Brown on this occasion) who’s certainly more put upon than college porters are now (in my experience at least). There’s pathos in medical student Anson (Roman Asde) continually chasing Maggie for an interview and getting more than they bargained for: a self-parody Hare must have winked at.
The band themselves are dominated by the wild antics of Pyote (Jojo Macari), bass guitarist animal, set for crazed confrontations alternating with sheer oblivion. You can’t think it will end well. there’s a real danger to Macari’s performance. Wily Smegs in Samuel Jordan’s skirling northern performance, is far more attuned to the main chance, but almost wistful in his sardonic eye.
Noah Weatherby’s roadie Inch is an elder analogue, and chime with the laconic, just bored but efficient band members who want tto get on with the next gig, if it can wake them up. Wilson the Keyboardist in Michael Abubakar turns in a powerful performance all round, and Nash (as Drummer) with a subsong patterned out by self-effacing Bill Caple. Joseph Evans’ Randolph as the sar singer is riveting vocally, much like Taylor and the whole band blaze a sleazy but wholly authentic rebelliousness when they’re singing. 2026 forces us to reflect on what defiance and disaffection means all over again.
But it’s Laura (Aysha Kaal) who provides perhaps the most poignant axis on which the band spins. Another former student and nominally the ban’ publicist, she despairs at how Arthur’s drawn back to Maggie, who some time ago rejected him. Laura want a life with Arthur, but can he ever get off the drug of drugless Maggie? As the play progresses, we get an answer, and it’s Kala by the end who moves most. The ensemble is completed by Gregor Milne.
The trajectory and surprising denouement also contains the unsurprising marginalisation of Maggie, but not for reasons you’d expect. Not quite. Maggies’ clear about what she wants and allows events to dictate a curious epiphany. It’s Tayltos’ and Daniels’ series of stand-offs that absorb most, as they recognise more than anyone else what’s happening, and why. Daniels’ cynical use of Maggie and the others isn’t as empty as it seems, and Daniels embarks on the great monologue of his experience of the Cafe de Paris bomb of March 1941.
Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design is pin-sharp and nothing’s lost, too often the case with this kind of hybrid. Liam Godwin’s music supervision has lent the delivery a directness and panache that’s never overwhelming either.
Chloe Lamford’s set is swept up for just this kind of playing out. And responds to the original directions of as minimal a stage as possible. But that doesn’t preclude band clutter, chairs and a spectacular effect later on. Alex Mullins allows the grungy, down-at-heel end of the sixties to infuse the costumes and sheer dowdiness to invade college dwellers. Lit by Matt Daw, there’s smaller-scale stadium effects and a consummation, not to mention conflagration.
Polly Bennet’s movement choreography makes as much use as a cluttered stage allows. Whilst Alex Payne’s fight direction involves a set-piece fracas.
Hare’s writing often crackles with some brilliant dialogue (sometimes funnier, even more risk-taking than he became), and his earlier political antennae sharp. It is though a work certainly wound with eddies, a baggy monster of bon-mots. And very slightly indulgent of Cambridge and Hare’s former self, whilst protesting a lot.
Nevertheless, as Teeth ‘n’ Smiles ends, we’re left to feel the long withdrawing roar of the 1960s, and the bleaker horizons and disillusion Hare – and, presciently Maggie – saw by 1975. A must-see.
Casting Director Bryony Jarvis-Taylor CDG CSA, Marketing Arthouse, PR Raw PR, Production Manager Lloyd Thomas, General Manager Wessex Grove, CSM Alex Constantin, DSM Lizzie Cooper, ASM Georgia Dacey & Shannon Aisha Martin.
