A TASTE OF HONEY

‘You fell down, you get up. No one’s going to carry you about,’ 40-something Helen tells Jo, her pregnant teenage daughter. There is some terribly tough talk in Shelagh Delaney’s gutsy, funny and moving A Taste Of Honey, of which the long overdue revival is at the Lyttelton Theatre – the first ever at the National.

Initially staged in 1958 by Joan Littlewood’s legendary Theatre Workshop, it bounced into the West End, then Broadway, was made into a landmark film with Rita Tushingham and Dora Bryan and is now synonymous with gritty social realism.

Delaney, a working-class Salford girl of 19, who left school when she was 15, had done something remarkable. She had put teenage pregnancy, singlemotherhood, a mixed-race affair and a homosexual young man centre-stage. Two years later, Coronation Street appeared on the telly. And it was no coincidence: its creator had seen the play in the East End. It’s not the play’s issues now, however, that startle, but Delaney’s astonishingly deep, detailed examination of a motherdaughter relationship, which Lesley Sharp and Kate O’Flynn bring to extraordinarily vivid life.

But don’t for one second imagine that it’s all grim oop North. Hildegard Bechtler’s recreation of the flat overlooking the gasworks, and within sniffing distance of the slaughterhouse, couldn’t be nastier. The settee and wallpaper are so stained you’d be worried about catching something. O’Flynn’s spiky, stroppy, sloppy gym-slipped Jo doesn’t wash or brush her hair. But these two women have an irrepressible spirit and vitality.

Helen, negligent, narcissistic, a stranger to vegetables and moral rectitude, has a shameless Scarlett O’Hara-like egotism and optimism. ‘There’s always another day,’ she says, peroxide hair primped, and dancing tipsily around the room in ivory satin undies, excited by the prospect of a night out on the tiles.


Moreover, there’s no whining, no judging, no self-pity and some fabulous frocks. As someone says: ‘She likes to make an effect.’ So does Jo. Indeed, it’s with a sinking feeling that you watch Jo turning out to be a chip off the old block. And not in a good way.

Though Helen isn’t without human feeling. She tries to give Jo some money when Geoff sneakily tells her about the baby. But it’s not the prospect of being a hands-on grandmother that brings her back to her daughter at the end, but the need for the roof over her own head.

Director Bijan Sheibani’s scene changes are done to the tune of jazz music of the time, adding to the vibrant atmosphere of a bittersweet play and production very much to my taste.

Until 11 May at the Lyttelton, South Bank, London SE1: 020-7452 3000, www.nationaltheatre.org.uk