Teeth ‘N’ Smiles at Duke of York’s review: why is everybody shouting?

Watching Rebecca Lucy Taylor, AKA Self Esteem, take on David Hare’s sprawling, bawling 1975 play with music, I kept asking myself why. Why revive this dated piece about a minor-league rock band combusting at Jesus College Cambridge’s 1969 May Ball? Why do it with a pop star who’s only had one previous major stage acting role, in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club? And why is everybody shouting?

Taylor delivers the original songs of Hare’s 70s collaborators Nick and Tony Bicât and her own additional material with full-throated verve, but as the self-destructive singer Maggie Frisbee she’s not blessed with nuance or subtlety. But then, neither is the script, which mostly consists of oafish muso banter while Maggie drinks herself into shrieking oblivion and a college porter and a gawky student flutter on the periphery.