A Taste Of Honey - Review

Trafalgar Studios, London


****


Written by Shelagh Delaney
Directed by Bijan Sheibani

Gemma Dobson, Tom Varey and Jodie Prenger

Arriving back in London from a tour that appropriately started off in Salford, the National Theatre’s revival of their 2014 take on Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste Of Honey makes for a glimpse of Britain’s North that is timely and refreshing. Viewed too, through the prism of December 2019’s General Election, that saw the traditional trade-union and Labour supporting regions switch their political allegiance, gives Delaney’s writing an even more pronounced perception.

Now 60 years old, the play tells a bleak working class narrative of Helen, a single Manchester mum and her teenage daughter Jo, both women craving love, seeking their own “taste of honey”. Jodie Prenger and Gemma Dobson play mother and child and each is starkly brilliant in their interpretations. Prenger’s Helen is as wise and whip-smart as she is needy and lonely. She knows the promises made to her by chancer boyfriend Peter (Tom Varey) will prove hollow, but her neediness sees her pursue the man anyway.

Dobson plays a different game in her quest for comfort and love – allowing herself first to be seduced by Jimmie (Durone Stokes) a black sailor on shore leave, before then forming a powerfully strong friendship with homosexual Geoffrey (Stuart Thompson). But this is 1950s Britain – where neither people of colour, nor gays were accepted by wider society. Speaking with me as the show opened, Prenger commented that while Britain has come a long way since Delaney’s time, there is still some distance yet to go.

Bijan Sheibani’s helming of the piece effectively delivers Delaney’s devastating text. With a three piece band on stage providing a backdrop that only adds to the play’s scorching commentary A Taste Of Honey offers up an unflinching mirror to us all.

Runs until 29th February 2020

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Jodie Prenger Talks About A Taste Of Honey

Jodie Prenger

Written 60 years ago, Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste Of Honey is an unsentimental glimpse of working-class Manchester, viewed through the lives of Helen, played by Jodie Prenger, and her daughter Jo.

As the National Theatre’s revival arrives at London’s Trafalgar Studios, I spoke briefly with Jodie Prenger, who plays Helen about the role

JB:    Jodie, tell me all about you and Helen.    

JP:    I've said this many times, I definitely don't go for wallflowers, do I?     

I've discovered that the characters I enjoy playing the most are the most flawed, and Helen is flawed, but I find her beautifully flawed.     

I think I find her to be a woman of circumstance, a woman of truth and I've just had an absolute joy playing her. I find it brilliant the fact that the experience I've had in my life with my family coming from Manchester, realising what a struggle it was and knowing that my nan was a woman who used to graft all the hours of a day and then go get her hair done and put her jewellery on!     

So there's that kind of element where it's very relatable to me, and I think that kind of warmth, the humour, the rawness of that era and of that little part in the world that I find really kind of truthful to me. I have just thoroughly enjoyed playing Helen with every inch of my soul. I really have.    

JB:    The play is 60 years old. How do you think time has impacted upon it?    

JP:    Speaking to people at the stage door and they say those issues about race, those issues about homosexuality, those issues about being a single mother back then were so taboo. So much so that the original cast were told where the exits were in case you get mobbed by the audience.    

It was that kind of unknown entity, shall we say. But whereas today, we still deal with those issues, so it's great to bring them up and reflect on them. I mean, back then we had so far to go, but even today we still have a little bit further to go    

It's true, everyone wants their taste of honey. Everyone wants to be loved. Everybody wants to strive. Everyone wants to see the next day and have that a bit of fun in their life, but their circumstances of where they are and their place in time doesn't always necessarily allow that. So there is still that to fight another day, which we all have and probably more so in this day and age than any other time, really.    

Society from 1950s England to now has changed immensely, but we still deal with these issues and we still talk about these issues, and A Taste Of Honey is a show that was written by this extraordinary 19-year-old girl from Salford that hit at the heart because she lived in the very heart of the city. She slept In and breathed Salford, and this is where these people, these characters, slept and breathed themselves. I think when you put yourself in these situations, or when you are in that situation, it's just the most magical place to write because you are speaking from the heart. I think that's what A Taste Of Honey does.    

The play speaks from the heart because we are human beings, and I think that's what Shelagh Delaney created, a masterpiece that caught that capsule of time, but that capsule of time is so raw that we are still human beings and still fight for the same reasons and still love and want to be loved for the same reasons.     

When we were on tour, there was a lady came to see it in Manchester. Then she came back to Birmingham to see it again and told me "I had to see it again. I had to answer my own question," and I think that's brilliant, that's what Shelagh Delaney, the playwright, did.    

I’m from Blackpool, 45 minutes away from where the play was written although I often wonder if Shelagh ever went into my nan's family's laundry or cafe, which were in Manchester.!

JB:    You shot to national fame winning the role of Nancy in Oliver, following the TV talent search I’d Do Anything. Give me a comment on musical theatre versus plays?
     

JP:    I find entertaining, or the world of entertainment, I should say, exciting. I think if you can push yourself and find ways that you can learn things about yourself ... I mean, in every single show I do, I learn something more about myself through the character or working with the creators or working with a cast.    

Drama on TV is very different to theatrical drama, and I find plays very different to musicals. But I think it's the adaptability that I find really exciting and I find that I learn. I think the thing I love the most is working with a really ... It sounds so soft and it's going to sound like a Miss World speech, but if I've got a lovely company to work with, I just find it extraordinary. I really, really do. I've been lucky so far. I mean, I've met a couple of nutters along the way, but there is not a single one on this job.So I'm thrilled, but it's just great, and working with Bijan and all the show’s creatives has been fantastic. It really has. You always know when you get into a rehearsal room, when you have the first read-through, that's something that's quite magical. You go, "Oh, okay, now I know what we've got here." and that's exciting.

So yeah, it's not necessarily about what I prefer. I think it's about what you can learn and what you can gain and what you get out of a job. I think we are all victims sometimes, slaving at jobs that just aren't working, but I am very lucky in the fact that I just love what I do, really.


A Taste Of Honey runs until 29th February 2020 at Trafalgar Studios
Photo credit: Marc Brenner

A Taste Of Honey

National Theatre, London

****

Written by Shelagh Delaney

Directed by Bijan Sheibani

Kate O'Flynn

The 2014 season at the National Theatre could arguably be renamed “Unhappy Families, A Study On Parents And Daughters”. Whilst the Lear dynasty rages at each other in the Olivier, a far more recognisable family of modern Britons has lodged in the Lyttleton. Shelagh Delaney's A Taste Of Honey is her 1958 debut that paints a bleak tale of single parenthood in Salford, Lancashire.

It's a carefully crafted piece of theatre, all the more remarkable for having been penned by the 19 year-old Delaney who hailed from a working class Manchester background. In a literary era still dominated by a privileged patriarchy, that her work prevailed at all was due to the playwright’s nurturing by the remarkable Joan Littlewood. The play was first seen on the Theatre Royal stage at Stratford East and that Littlewood’s Oh What A Lovely War is currently in revival there, speaks volumes for the older woman’s theatrical energy and vision.

A Taste of Honey pivots around school-aged Josephine (Jo) and her mother Helen. Kate O'Flynn is Jo, giving a career defining performance that portrays the feisty girl who has never been shown maternal love, from petulant teenager through to the brink of motherhood. O'Flynn is at once naive, worldly and coquette. When her mother is besotted with latest suitor Peter, it is Jo‘s radar that detects the man is a serial cheating womaniser. When Jo does ultimately find an unconditional love from gay friend Geoffrey, O'Flynn's handling of her affection for the young man avoids all mawkish sentimentality. Hers is a complex role and in one of the finest performances currently to be found in London, she masters Jo's challenges superbly.

Lesley Sharp is Helen. Bitter and hard, more concerned with having a man in her arms than her daughter's welfare. Sharp is an expert foil to O'Flynn's teenage angst and her desperate love for her dishonest boyfriend could almost be pitiful. Delaney however is too smart to allow us any sympathy for the self-centred harridan and her final act of selfish cruelty towards her daughter is heart-breaking. 

The support given by Harry Hepple's gold-hearted Geoffrey to the pregnant Jo has moments of true pathos, whilst Dean Lennox Kelly makes Peter every inch the drunken manipulative spiv. Jimmie, the father of Jo's child is a black sailor, fecklessly home on shore leave. The play is famed for addressing the issue of British racism at the time with the challenges that Jo will soon face as the white mother of a black child, yet these are only hinted at during the second act and the play’s unsatisfactory conclusion tests the limits of plausibility. That’s the only flaw mind, for otherwise Delaney’s writing is spot on. Eric Kofi Abrefa could make more of Jimmie. He recently shone in the National's The Amen Corner and Kofi Abrefa has more in the tank that can lift the seaman free of the cliché he currently suggests.

The back to back housing of a rain drenched industrial Manchester is cleverly evoked in Hildegard Bechtler’s design with a striking curtain image setting the scene pre-show. Our nation has moved on in 56 years. Illegitimacy is acceptable and though racism and homophobia still flourish in some quarters, much has been done to broaden the country’s attitudes towards diversity. A Taste Of Honey represents quality writing of a bygone era, with a memorable performance from O’Flynn. The NT would do well to send this one on tour, the regions deserve to see it.

Now booking until May 11th 2014