It’s 5pm on St Martin’s Lane and Rebecca Lucy Taylor is hanging backwards over the Duke of York’s Theatre balcony, belting her lungs out. She’s there in the guise of Maggie Frisby: whirlwind, rock star, force of nature. For the past six weeks — and until June 6 — Taylor has been portraying the unpredictable lead in the theatre’s all-singing, all-self-destructing revival of David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth ’n‘ Smiles. A show she’s been describing as “what the music industry does to women”, it’s not a stretch to see what attracted the multi-hyphenate artist most commonly known as award-winning, festival-headlining pop disruptor Self Esteem to the role.
Taylor is clearly getting a kick out of Maggie and the set of unlikely milestones that come with her: not least the chance to join the canon of figures who have sung from rooftops. “Evita, The Beatles on a roof… everything about Teeth ’n‘ Smiles is taking some more glossy theatre thing or band thing that’s done all this before, and we’re just the horrible, smelly inverse,” Taylor hoots with a loud, infectious cackle, sitting in her dressing room the following day. “We’re the horrible, smelly inverse of [previous Duke of York’s rock ’n’ roll musical] Stereophonic, and I love it. I love celebrating that and not feeling in competition with it.”
