A Taste Of Honey - Richmond

Reviewed By: Ian Johns

Teenage pregnancy, drunkenness, mixed-race relationships, homosexuality . . . today, such issues are fodder for primetime soaps. When Shelagh Delaney tackled these themes in A Taste of Honey in 1958, she was breaking taboos over the kitchen sink.

Joan Littlewood's original production transferred to the West End and New York and was filmed in 1961 by Tony Richardson, with Rita Tushingham as the heroine, Jo, the schoolgirl full of naive defiance. Samantha Robinson takes that role in this touring revival.

Jo lives in a filthy bedsit in late-Fifties Salford, with charming views of the local cemetery and slaughterhouse. She shares it with her feckless mother, Helen, who is so wrapped up in securing her next drink and a “fancy man” to support her that she is unaware that her daughter has become pregnant by her black sailor lover.

Abandoned by both, Jo sets up temporary home with Geoff, a gay arts student equally bruised by insensitivity and rejection, who is happy to soothe, clean and cook for her.

Delaney's play is that rare thing, a slice of Fifties social realism from a female perspective. But she was only 19 when she saw her debut play staged and her inexperience shows.

The drama suffers from patches of overwriting, the characters' asides to the audience disrupt an already uncertain balance of the serious and comic, and the play's energy ebbs away with a long, dying fall leading to an inconclusive ending. Despite some still biting, vibrant dialogue, it is not matched by Stuart Wood's slackly paced production, which never achieves sufficient momentum to carry us through. His use of music, including opening with the Everly Brothers' Bye Bye Love and introducing Jo and her boyfriend with Bobby Darin's Dream Lover, also gives the play an air of rock'n'roll nostalgia rather than rooting us in the drama's grittier concerns.

Samantha Giles, perhaps a little too glamorous as Helen, is a one-note blast of blowsy self-regard that encourages the other actors to drown out any nuance in her scenes; Andonis Anthony, as the alcoholic spiv she marries, has a touch of the Boycies from Only Fools and Horses.

As Jo, the hard-bitten teenager turned vulnerable mum-to-be, Robinson is allowed to show greater depth in her more reflective moments involving her amiable lover (Chris Jack) and sensitive housemate (a touching Bruno Langley).

Helen eventually returns with a black eye and a belated burst of maternal concern to raise the decibels again. What poignant pain remains is drowned out and leaves you uncertain whether to laugh or cry and feeling as confused as Jo herself. **

© The Times, 6/6/06

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