TEETH 'N' SMILES. To 23 November.

Sheffield

TEETH 'N' SMILES
by David Hare Lyrics by Tony Bicat

Crucible Theatre To 23 November 2002
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval

TICKETS 0114 249 6000
Review Timothy Ramsden 7 November

A non-nostalgic trip back to an early Hare, well worth reviving.In the early 70s David Hare was among the wild bunch of playwrights whose style made the fifties 'angries' look mildly irritated. This 1975 play with songs shows an evolution. No longer undiluted fury, it still questions with a disenchanted voice. And it's given a fine revival (with new music) at the Crucible.

Set in a Cambridge University college garden, Teeth shows clashing (gnashing?) lifestyles, a rough-hewn rock-group at the centre, effete upper-class undergraduates swaddled in comfortable discontent on the periphery. These distant voyeurs of rebellion are epitomised in Dominic Charles-Rouse's elegantly brittle Anson, speaking in nervous clutches of grammatically-abrupt speech - a favoured style for these playwrights then

Hayden Griffin's set replaces Hare's minimalism with a Rock-bandstand thrusting assertively on to a neat college lawn. Here the group hang about, gradually fixing their gear (musical and chemical) while the students grow impatient outside. Talk is about their self-destructive singer Maggie – Amanda Donohoe bringing to the part Helen Mirren created a lithe, high-wire nervous intensity.

Things begin characteristically: 'Right. Let's smash the place up' says the roadie Inch, a hirsute, nonchalant Nicolas Tennant. And it finishes by referring to the smashed-up in the song 'Last orders on The Titanic' - ending, 'The music remains the same'.

Exacerbating the destruction are several arrivals at the gig: ex-college graduate, songwriter and Maggie's ex, Arthur. Scott Handy suggests a privileged haughteur curdled by world-weariness, struck through still with memories of the dynamic personality he loved. Provoking her more immediate destruction is a drugs-bust, smugly announced by Robert Calvert's much-abused college porter, symbol of all the bandsmen hate.

And in comes the band's manager, Ivan Kaye's bleakly authoritative Saraffian: only Lucy Briers' resilient, perplexed PR person understands he's closing down the party, and the group.

The play's strength is in combining its present-tense energy with a look-over-the-shoulder at the liner approaching the iceberg. Set as the 1960s ends, it includes a vivid memory-speech disrupting the cosy wartime forties myth. This production makes me glad it's so rarely revived: it saves the piece from mediocre showings. This one's a vivid class act.

Arthur: Scott Handy
Titch: Nicolas Tennant
Laura: Lucy Briers
Wilson: Zubin Varla
Nash: Justin Pickett
Peyote: Keith-Lee Castle
Snead: Robert Calvert
Maggie: Amanda Donohoe
Smegs: Lance Burman
Anson: Dominic Charles-Rouse
Saraffian: Ivan Kaye
Randolph: William Maidwell
Policemen: Joe Aiston, Richard Cottyn, Scott Harris, Richard Taylor

Director: Anna Mackmin
Designer: Hayden Griffin
Lighting: Howard Harrison
Composer/Musical Director: Sean Read

2002-11-14 09:29:58