A Taste Of Honey - Sheffield

Reviewed By: Mike Woodcock

Gritty social realism gives way to a frothier confection as Shelagh Delaney's 60s kitchen sink classic is revived with soap star leads.

More than fifty years ago, A Taste of Honey was a ground-breaking and much loved film of the sixties. Now the Crucible in Sheffield is giving us a chance to see the theatrical origins of that film, Shelagh Delaney's play of the same title.

It's a significantly different affair; lighter, funnier, more upbeat and with several nods towards music hall. It's still the same story of working class, angry young (and middle-aged) woman that swept away the cobwebs of middle class and middle-brow British theatre, but its potency has weakened with the changin' times.

Kitchen sink drama was of course the genre that plays like A Taste of Honey became known by, and here everything but the kitchen sink is thrown into the melting pot.

It's all there - homosexuality, still illegal in those times, inter-race relationships, single mothers, domestic violence and famously a pregnancy that's under-age and unwanted.

A lot to say then, and it does take a long time saying it. In the end its all rather hollow and what was brave and demanding a lifetime ago now runs as a rather quaint period piece, with gags that were surely feeble when the play was first written in 1958 by the then 18-year-old Ms Delaney.

It is splendidly acted by a cast of five, with standout performances by Samantha Robinson, whose taste of honey turned so sour so quickly, Samantha Giles as her reckless mother, and Coronation Street's Bruno Langley as her queer - in the vernacular of the times - but loyal friend.

The Crucible's thrust stage does present a challenge for a production that's touring traditional theatres, leaving almost the front half of the stage unused because of the limits of set design. It does affect a play where intimacy is important, but ultimately it's the dated and drawn out script that fails a modern audience.

© BBC South Yorkshire, 17/5/06

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