Teeth ’n’ Smiles
Duke of Yorks, London
★★★☆☆

DAVID HARE’s Teeth ’n’ Smiles is the story of a pop band at the tail end of their semi-successful musical career, spending one night of their newest tour, in 1969, playing Jesus College, Cambridge. The story revolves around the failed relationship between lead singer Maggie, played by Rebecca Lucy Taylor, and the band’s writer Arthur, played by Michael Fox.

It was first performed 50 years ago and watching it now the characters feel like cliche. The wild rock singer, strung out on drugs and alcohol, overexploited, overworked, consumed by their failings, is no longer — despite being well played — a novel depiction of the late ’60s music scene. 

Saraffian, the sleazy manager, played by Phil Daniels, is money obsessed, manipulative and criminal. The drugged-up bass guitarist Peyote, played by Jojo Macari, spends most of the play tripping, a portrayal of the self-destructive aspects of drug culture, balancing laughs with the hard realities of addiction.

These are stereotypes for a contemporary audience.

Before the play begins Arthur sits upon stage with his back to the audience, smoking cigarettes. Simple effects like lights and moving platforms allow for fast set changes, working to give the impression of the audience being at the gig when the band perform their music. This softened fourth wall is used to emphasise the play’s critique of the period.

The cultural critique is its strongest theme, and in my view most applicable to our time. It is seen clearly in Maggie and Arthur’s responses to the perceived failures of the revolutionary moment their music arose from. In their own ways they are grappling with the sense that the world cannot be changed, and the nihilism that rises when revolutionary optimism dies.

Throughout the play Maggie says things like there is “no great” and “no beautiful” only the “filth of getting old.” She claims the “revolution” and “the acid dream” are “over” so “let us have a good time.” Arthur, frustrated by the capacity of the system to absorb revolutionary energy by commodifying it, says that “the rules” of changing the world “are so complicated it’s like three-dimensional chess.”

To be here for a good time, and not for a long time, is the nature of nihilism in capitalist society, and it comes from the belief that the world itself cannot be changed. To feel powerless is relatable: in the face of vastly growing wealth inequality, wars, the genocide in Palestine, and the destruction of the environment, it is easy to lose hope and seek out ways to numb oneself.

Teeth ’n’ Smiles tells a story of the past that haunts our present: music, drugs, alcohol and free love, were never going to change the world, and led to the culture of consumption that followed the failed promises of radical change.

But the gains of ’60s radicalism shouldn’t be forgotten. Women’s liberation, the civil rights movement, opposition to US imperialism and the Vietnam war. These all fought against injustice and won. Nihilism does not reflect the reality of history.

Teeth ’n’ Smiles is at its best where it illuminates this dilemma, in between the laughs that arise from the shallow drama of the characters’ lives. But the play never goes far enough. It never poses an alternative path towards a better future.  

Runs until June 6. Box office: teethnsmilesplay.com.