Teeth 'n' Smiles

Synopsis

It's 1969. It's rock and roll. Change is in the air. Maggie is off her beautiful face and the building's on fire. Welcome to the gig... First seen at the Royal Court Theatre in 1975.

Our Review:

7 November 2002

Oh to have been there 25 years ago when Helen Mirren blasted into the Royal Court with Teeth 'n' Smiles, especially at the performance, recalled by writer David Hare, when The Who's drummer Keith Moon smashed his Rolls into the theatre, got out and wandered drunkenly on to the stage.

The play survives, but without the deep-gutted excitement it must have had then. Now it's an interesting piece of history firmly rooted in its time. Back then, the clash between rock culture and the bourgeois was almost tangible; so the image of the heavy rock band turning up to play at an Oxbridge May Ball was a poignant one. Rockers truly believed they were the proletarian revolution waiting to happen to Britain, a belief increasingly victualled by booze and chemical cocktails.

But the class enemy wouldn't fight back: it either sought assimilation, like the dinner-jacketed reporter from the student newspaper here ("I'm hoping to drop out, yo...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (62.252.224.7) - 10 November 2002:

It was one of those evenings when you felt that it should be outstanding, involving, dramatically electrifying - and it wasn't. Enjoyable, yes, always well acted and sometimes more than that, but uneven and somehow less satisfying than the sum of its parts. Was everyone trying too hard? Maybe....

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