Rebecca Lucy Taylor, the musician known as Self Esteem, is making her West End debut in a revival of David Hare's 1975 play Teeth 'n' Smiles at the Duke of York's Theatre. The production, which runs until June 6, follows the self-destructive lead Maggie Frisby, a role Taylor describes as 'what the music industry does to women'. The singer, who previously appeared in Cabaret in 2023, says the play has helped restore her creative confidence after a period of burnout.
Taylor found the pressure of following up her Mercury Prize-nominated album Prioritise Pleasure with last year's A Complicated Woman challenging. 'I didn't completely sell out, but even bigger success was on my mind, and it didn't work,' she said. 'The fact that I compromised anything at all artistically made my mental health really bad.' She admitted feeling deceitful as a poster artist for female empowerment when she struggled to believe her own message.
Her therapist advised her to recapture the mindset she had during the pandemic, when she wrote Prioritise Pleasure after letting go of industry noise. Taylor said the West End role provided that shift: 'Turns out all you need to do is lead a West End play.' She described the production as 'the horrible, smelly inverse' of previous rock musicals, celebrating imperfection rather than competition.
Taylor first performed in the West End as Sally Bowles in Cabaret in 2023, establishing herself as a triple threat. She expressed deep gratitude for the current role, saying, 'I'll be so grateful for this job forever. When it finishes, I'll need to go into a facility because it's done so much for me.'
