A Taste Of Honey

7 Oct 2005 in Dance & Drama

Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, on tour 2005

Tunde Makinde as the boyfriend and Samantha Young as Jo.

YOU’VE GOT a girl just out of school who’s single and pregnant. She’s from a white family but the child will be black. Her flatmate is openly homosexual and her heavy drinking mother has abandoned her for a sleazy fancy-man. The house is unsanitary and there is virtually no money coming in.

It could be a scenario for any number of worthy social dramas from the last two decades, but the remarkable thing about ‘A Taste of Honey’ is it was written by an 19-year-old Salford girl in 1958. And although the details have become staple fodder for pretty much every TV soap opera, there is a freshness and a truth about Shelagh Delaney’s kitchen-sink drama that still speaks clearly today.

At its centre is the fraught love-hate relationship between Helen and her daughter Jo. The mother is a kind of working-class prototype for Edina in ‘Absolutely Fabulous’, selfish and hedonistic, quick to undermine her daughter, yet needy of her affection. Jo is consequently impulsive, defensive and insecure, despite suggestions of a latent artistic talent that could free her if only she had the confidence.

All this is staged effectively in Guy Hollands’ production for TAG Theatre Company, performed on Neil Warmington’s cleverly stylised set made entirely of doors, lined up in two curving rows, ready for the to-ings and fro-ings of Jo’s peripatetic life.


Samantha Young captures the sense of the girl’s self-containment, quick-witted and tough but somehow too defeated to really blossom.


As Helen, Jennifer Black is a shade too glamorous to be comfortable with the harsher aspects of her character, much as she captures her narcissism. For all her self-indulgence, her life has been a struggle and that tough edge doesn’t always come across – she’s certainly a step above the “semi-whore” described in the published script. Her reliance on hard drink and hard men should feel as much an act of desperation as of escape.

What’s clear is her position as domineering mother – and you can only feel for Samantha Young’s put-upon Jo every time she is eclipsed by this force of nature. Young captures the sense of the girl’s self-containment, quick-witted and tough but somehow too defeated to really blossom.

Hollands, like the play’s first director Joan Littlewood, chooses to have certain lines delivered straight out to the audience as if the characters are commenting on their situation to us, their imaginary friends. It’s a technique designed to break away from fourth-wall naturalism and establish a chummy rapport with the audience – and I’m all for that. Here though it feels awkward and inconsistent, the actors looking like they can’t wait to rush back to the story rather than enjoy the moment.

Still, it’s a strong enough play to withstand such quibbles and remains an engrossing, radical portrait of a young woman held down by oppressive attitudes towards class, race and sex.

TAG Theatre’s tour includes performances at Ellon Academy (31 October), Speyside High School, Aberlour (1 November), Inverurie Academy (2 November), Woodend Barn, Banchory (3 November), and Elgin Town Hall (4 November).

© Mark Fisher, 2005

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