Tag Archives: Duke of York’s

Review – Teeth ‘n’ Smiles, Duke of York’s Theatre, London, 1st April 2026

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Back in the day, Mrs Chrisparkle and my mother-in-law Lady Prosecco were great aficionados of those fashion gurus Trinny and Susannah. In the fashion world, a good design never really goes away, but on the subject of revivals of old styles, one of their mantras was if you’re old enough to have worn it the first time around, don’t wear it the second. I’m wondering if that also applies to theatre. I am old enough to remember the fuss about Teeth ‘n’ Smiles the first time around, although not quite old enough to have seen it. But my very respectable English teacher at the time thought it was great, probably because it made him fall in love with Helen Mirren. I remember devouring the text as a teenager and being thrilled at how daring and dangerous it all was. So, when it was announced that T ‘n’ S was coming back, I booked for it instantly.

In case you don’t know, Maggie Frisby and her band are a bit down on their uppers; whilst showing loads of promise they never quite made it to the big time. Their manager Saraffian has arranged them a tour which includes playing the 1969 May Ball at Jesus College Cambridge. A perfectly reasonable booking: George Melly came to our college May Ball in 1979 and he was ace. However, the good partygoers at Jesus didn’t have such a great night as we did. Wracked with alcohol and fuelled by drugs, the band are a dishevelled lot whose conversation ranges from what’s the most boring thing you can think of to where can I get a blowjob. Arthur, their songwriter, makes a surprise appearance and we slowly learn that his association with the band clearly extended beyond mere songwriting. Bass guitarist Peyote is only concerned with shooting up; and star singer Maggie has passed out through drink and has to be carried on, washed and dressed before she can perform.

Teeth ‘n’ Smiles takes us, set by set, through the rigours of that night, with animosities between the group members exposed, limp intervention on the part of Anson, the College Ball rep, the ruthless manager only looking after his own interests, the breaking of hearts, the theft of college articles and a run-down whisky sloshing singer doing her best against the odds. No wonder I thought it was daring and dangerous when I was fifteen.

The appeal of revisiting an old play is discovering those timeless truths that applied when it was written and are still valid today. Teeth ‘n’ Smiles deals with unrequited love, the self-destruction inherent in too much talent and ambition, and of course the damage that drink and drugs can do. I am a huge admirer of David Hare’s writing, and some of his early work still reads superbly. Teeth ‘n’ Smiles, however, seems long past its best by date. What was once shocking now feels somewhat infantile; and some of the speeches, particularly as the play progresses, come across as genuinely pretentious. Conversations are stilted and flow unnaturally, and Daniel Raggatt’s direction seems to encourage a static presentation, which sadly lends an air of dullness to the whole proceedings.

A minor example of how dated it feels, but one that I think typifies the problem: David Hare has Arthur constantly humming Cole Porter’s You’re the Top whilst he’s hanging around waiting for stuff to happen. That was probably stretching imagination in 1975 but today it’s just so unlikely. At the time it was said that Helen Mirren’s Maggie evoked memories of the late Janis Joplin; no offence, but do we really care much about her as the 2020s turn towards the 2030s?

In addition, I found two of the supplementary characters very hard to believe. The tongue-tied fish out of water student, Anson, would never have been put in charge of organising the ball unless he radiated confidence and was a proven organiser; and the college porter, Snead, simply would not have accepted the language and the disrespect that the band members dish out to him. Everyone knows that Oxbridge students and their guests owe everything to how they treat the porter; in real life Snead would simply have delivered a withering no to their demands and gone home to bed.

That said, it’s still fascinating to witness an early example of what we think of today as gig theatre. The band performance scenes, which are without question the best part of the production, pepper the play to suggest the three sets that the band perform during the course of the ball. It’s emphatically not a musical but a play with music; Nick and Tony Bicât’s original songs are all still there, with the addition of one more, Maggie’s Song, written by Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem) who plays Maggie. It’s a nice idea, which lends an additional personal touch to her performance. Some of the songs are strikingly memorable; the brilliant Don’t Let the Bastards Come Near You will haunt your musical memory mind for days. In fact, the production goes all out to make these musical moments as strong as they can be – Matt Daw’s lighting design goes into overdrive.

Rebecca Lucy Taylor has a terrific voice and a powerful stage presence and certainly comes into her own during the musical numbers. Phil Daniels plays Saraffian as a weaselly old scoundrel and does a good job of making some truly intractable speeches understandable. At our performance, the role of Laura was played by understudy Levi Heaton who brought some genuine emotion to the piece. The band members are of course all excellent musicians, with spirited banter from Michael Abubakar as Wilson, Bill Caple as Nash and Noah Wetherby as Inch. Jojo Macari energetically plays the permanently high bass guitarist Peyote, and there’s amusing support from Joseph Evans as Saraffian’s latest project Randolph.

A classic case of everything being right about the production except the play. There were long sequences where the audience was simply dulled into silence, and our overall reaction to the play was muted. I’m glad I saw it, and I’m sure fans of Self Esteem will be thrilled seeing Rebecca Lucy Taylor in action. But it truly wasn’t for me.

Two Disappointing for More!

Review – Backstairs Billy, Duke of York’s Theatre, London, 27th December 2023

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Every year for the last ten years – apart from in 2020, *obvs* – we’ve taken a trip to the capital for a few nights between Christmas and New Year to take in some shows and hit the London sales. And our first target of the 2023 season was Marcelo Dos Santos’ Backstairs Billy, a refreshingly amusing couple of hours spent in the company of the Queen Mother, her faithful servant and a couple of racing corgis. Dos Santos’ Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen was one of the big hits of 2022’s Edinburgh Fringe so I was keen to see some more of his work.

William Tallon – or Billy to his friends – was recruited into the Royal Household at the age of fifteen, and twenty-seven years later became Page of the Backstairs in Clarence House, a position he held until the Queen Mother’s death in 2002. The play is primarily set in 1979, and we see Billy taking complete charge of the minutiae of the Queen Mother’s daily living – her entertaining guests, her planning her day, her deciding what to eat, and so on. We also see how he gets on with the Queen Mother’s secretary (not very well) and other members of staff over whom he holds great sway. It’s a way of life that works well for both page and royal, but when a gentleman caller by the name of Ian becomes something of a tricky overnight guest, relations with the QM also get a little strained.

It’s an enjoyable play with nicely drawn characters – even the minor ones – that makes you both laugh and – not quite cry, but you do feel sadness coming through from time to time. It escalates to some moments of unexpected and delightful farce, such as when an artwork, which is unmistakably a dildo, keeps cropping up in unwanted and royal hands. Ian masquerading as the Prince of Lesotho provides a very funny scene of mistaken identity which is played beautifully. And there’s also a very poignant scene with the ageing Lady Adeline who can’t understand where Bertie has gone, much to everyone’s nicely handled awkwardness.

But this isn’t all just drawing-room comedy; there is a dark side to the play, which I didn’t feel was either fully believable or comfortable to watch. The Queen Mother has her own way of taking Billy down a peg or two and showing him who’s boss. When his gay escapades start to intrude on the integrity and indeed security of the Royal Household, and she appears publicly to disapprove of his wanton sexual behaviour, she punishes him with a pretty revolting task designed purely to humiliate him. However, we’ve already seen her when they were both younger, back in 1952, when Billy first came into her service, encouraging him to wear a Royal tiara and necklace and to explore in his gayness. In modern parlance, she groomed him; and there’s a significant disconnect between her treatment of Billy then and in 1979. If this is meant to show that her own attitudes to homosexuality have changed over the years, it doesn’t work; it comes across as simply inconsistent.

You can absolutely believe that we are in the Garden Room at Clarence House with Christopher Oram’s stunning set – immaculately tasteful and regal, and with a huge amount of consideration going into the positions of the floral bouquets. Tom Rand’s costumes for the Queen Mum are elegant, practical and are precisely how you would expect her to have dressed at home. In fact, all aspects of the production are superbly done.

Penelope Wilton leads the cast as the Queen Mother and it’s a role in which she revels. You get the feeling that the QM is so used to public life that she never really has a private moment in which to be herself; it’s a delicate, measured, considered portrayal, with no words ever out of place or wrongly delivered, even when she’s talking to herself. And of course Dame Penelope has terrific timing that beautifully exploits all the comic possibilities of the script. She is matched by Luke Evans as Billy, an imposing, authoritative stage presence who flips perfectly from being the respectful servant to the intimidating boss with ease, and always with a touch of flamboyance.

Iwan Davies is excellent as new household recruit Gwydion, all nervous hunched shoulders and painfully out of his depth, Ian Drysdale is also superb as the no-nonsense secretary Mr Kerr, always on hand to reprimand Billy for any misjudgements, and there are great supporting performances from all the cast, especially Eloka Ivo as the unpredictable Ian and Ilan Galkoff as the wet-behind-the-ears but keen young Billy.

A crowd-pleaser of a show that looks absolutely perfect in all respects and tickles our memories and any preconceptions we may have had of the Queen Mother, more than twenty years after her death. Terrific performances, and Mr Dos Santos is rapidly becoming a playwright to seek out.

 

 

4-starsFour They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – Home I’m Darling, Duke of York’s Theatre, 2nd March 2019

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Fashionistas, help me; I can’t remember, is Retro in or out this year? Whatever, it’s definitely in chez Judy and Johnny, where she spends her day dressed in her best 1950s garb, preparing meals for her beloved on a 1950s stove, using ingredients distilled into 1950s packaging, cleaning the floor with her 1950s carpet sweeper, and preparing 1950s cocktails for Johnny when he comes home from work.

But this is not the 1950s. This is today; and in her search to find her true self, Judy has espoused her favourite decade 100%. No interior design out of place, from the TV to the telephone, the sofa to the fridge, everything is genuine 1950s. Her only day-to-day link with the modern world in her home is her laptop, because she relies on eBay and Amazon to furnish her with her outdated, second-hand necessities. And, despite her spirited defence of her way of life, it’s all very sad.

Anna Fleischle has gone to town in creating her delightful 1950s set. When we see it, as we enter the auditorium, with its dolls’ house frontage, it suggests both a perfect idyll, but also a plaything, a façade. However, when the front of the house flies up and Judy comes along and physically pushes the front door into place to reveal a proper, lived-in home, we discover this is genuinely her real life. Visually, it’s both amusing and stunning, with excellent attention to detail, from the pineapple ice-bucket to the starburst mirror. The superb 50s styling of Judy’s clothes make for an obvious contrast with the modern-day outfits worn by everyone else who comes to her house. There’s a moment in the second act when the set comes to life and switches from “half-renovated” to “fully-DIY’d” and receives a round of applause all for itself.

And I think that’s the key to the whole play. On the face of it, it’s quirky, funny, outrageous even. But when you get under the surface, there’s not actually a lot going on. I can sum up the plot quite simply: Woman takes voluntary redundancy in order to live out 1950s fantasy existence; runs out of money, goes back to work. That’s it. The rest of the play is padded out, watching Judy interact with the outside world in the form of her friend Fran, her mother Sylvia and Johnny’s boss Alex. None of them really “get it” – Fran is supportive of her lifestyle, but bemused; Sylvia thinks she’s an idiot; and Alex suspects that whatever it is that Judy’s got, Johnny might catch it. Johnny blames the fact that he was passed up for promotion on Judy’s 50s obsession which made Alex feel uneasy – and he’s probably right.

In fact, it may well be that Judy’s mental health is in question here, revealing some need to turn her back on reality and escape into her own little cocoon. However, if that is the case, then it appears to be one of the most easily treated mental illnesses ever recorded; simply by happily skipping off to work at the end of the play, it implies she’s cured. I think the play is also trying to send a message about feminism – but I can’t quite work out what that message is. All the way through, it’s Judy who’s in the driver’s seat. She decides to leave work, she decides to devote herself full-time to running her fantasy household, she decides to conceal their debt from Johnny, she decides to go back to work. As a couple, she’s takes the assertive role, and he’s the passive one. But despite that, she’s not happy, and she doesn’t achieve what she wants. Don’t push too hard, your dreams are china in your hand? Not sure.

You might be getting the message, gentle reader, that I didn’t care for this play very much. Sadly, that’s true. Despite its initial impact – that opening scene ends with a delightful coup de theatre – I began to get a little bored, which for me is the cardinal sin for a play. None of the characters is particularly likeable, except Judy’s tell-it-like-it-is mother Sylvia, who tries desperately to appeal to her daughter to see sense and take control of reality. As she says, unless you were a straight white male, the 50s were shit. Why celebrate that time of rationing and dreariness now? It’s not unlike the current fad for pro-Brexiteers to hanker after the good old days of the Second World War; we survived it then, we can survive it now. But, as Sylvia tries to make Judy see, it’s clearly a smokescreen for something else. Doesn’t she want to achieve more than mere survival?

Got political there, soz. Nearly everyone else in the play – Johnny, Fran, Alex – is portrayed with only modest, vanilla characterisation so we don’t really know much about them; and Marcus is clearly a sex pest but only has a minor involvement in the story. As for Laura Wade’s writing, it’s quite funny in parts, but probably not funny enough to think of it as a proper comedy. Any serious attempt to draw out a feminist – or indeed anti-feminist – argument in the play gets bogged down and befuddled. In the end, this is simply a story of someone making a decision to do something; then realising they were wrong and changing their mind; then moving on. Happens all the time, doesn’t it? I sense there’s a good play lurking under the surface here, but Home I’m Darling isn’t it.

Katherine Parkinson is one of our most intelligent and insightful stage performers and she makes the best of the role of Judy, revealing the character’s inner frustrations and ambitious motives, but even she can’t make it soar. Susan Brown is excellent as Sylvia, dishing out her caustic bonmots and the stage certainly brightens up when she comes on. Sara Gregory gives a nicely perplexed performance as Johnny’s boss Alex, out of her depth in weirdo-land.

But I’m afraid I was distinctly unimpressed with the whole thing. Happy to accept that I’m out of kilter on this one as it received rapturous applause from the audience and the critics have rated it highly. After its short stay at the Duke of York’s, it’s having a mini-tour to Bath and the Lowry in Salford, before returning to its birthplace from last summer, Theatr Clwyd.

P. S. Perhaps my reaction was in part to the uncomfortable nature of the Duke of York’s Theatre. Yes, it looks beautiful, but the bars and public areas are cramped and the toilets few-and-far-between. Go to the loo before you arrive!