Life & Times Theatre

A Taste of Honey workers came cap Trafalgar Studios, London, 10 December in hand and call the 2019 to 29 February 2020 boss “sir”. Usually North Country I’M NOT HAPPY AND I’M NOT SAD people are shown as ‘I’m not frightened of the darkness outside. gormless, whereas in It’s the darkness inside houses I don’t like.’ actual fact, they are very alive and cynical.’ The above is a line from the play I have Kitchen sink always found most touching and revealing drama developed in because it betrays the emotional neglect of a the late 1950s and daughter, as covered up by the sharp retorts early 1960s, and had and clipped, blackly comic wisecracks of characters described both mother and daughter — the two main as ‘angry young men’ protagonists in the play A Taste of Honey disillusioned with A vigorous new production has opened at their lot (the popular the Trafalgar Studios in London. Directed soap Coronation by Bijan Sheibani, the play once said to have Street being the changed British theatre has the talented natural successor performer and singer Jodie Prenger in its of the genre). The lead role as Helen, a ballsy, unsympathetic, working class were Gemma Dobson (Jo), Tom Varey (Peter), and Jodie Prenger (Helen). Photo credit Marc Brenner. selfish, calculating woman, never without a depicted living in drink in her hand. For its time, portraying cramped and grotty a woman, mean on her own terms, was housing (often sat at cares for her, not one who runs off with something of a revelation. the kitchen table in their vest or nightwear, any abusive, silver-tongued ‘fancy man’ at Shelagh Delaney, born in 1938 in Salford, smoking, drinking tea, perhaps cleaning the drop of a hat. Both women do what Lancashire, wrote the play (her debut) in their shoes on newspaper), and managing they can in their limited circumstances to 1958, when she was just 19. Apparently to survive boring jobs and early marriages, escape, to find love, lust, or a port in a storm. written in 10 days, as a response to seeing in order to let loose at the weekend with The twisted mother–daughter relationship is Terence Rattigan’s Variation on a Theme alcohol and forbidden, extramarital sex. well illustrated and the dialogue as snappy at the Opera House, Manchester, during Delaney’s play (made into a film in 1961 and acerbic as intended, with tragedy and its pre–West End tour, Delaney was of the and worth a watch) focuses on a schoolgirl, loneliness lying just beneath the surface. opinion that the play showed ‘insensitivity in Jo (played convincingly by Gemma Dobson), In 1986, The Smiths’ lead singer and the way Rattigan portrayed homosexuals’. who has a brief fling with a black sailor, lyricist Morrissey said, ‘I’ve never made any Delaney wanted to show the working (shocking for the time), becomes pregnant secret of the fact that at least 50 per cent (again, for the time, scandalous), and then class in a more authentic, less patronising of my reason for writing can be blamed on moves in with a gay, somewhat camp male way. She hated: ‘… plays where the factory Shelagh Delaney.’ The lyrics of ‘This Night friend (played by Stuart Thompson very Has Opened My Eyes’ (a mournful, beautiful Gemma Dobson (Jo) and Stuart Thompson (Geoffrey). Photo well and with sensitivity). The themes song), for example, recites in part the plot credit Marc Brenner. of class, race, gender, and sexuality of A Taste of Honey, using the quotes ‘The are thus covered but in an unforced dream has gone but the baby is real’, as way and according to the codes of the well as ‘river the colour of lead’, and, ‘I’m day. The male characters have smaller not happy and I’m not sad’. roles and are attendant on the female A play with this much myth behind it leads. Jo has a seemingly-monstrous could possibly be a let-down on viewing mother: she has scant maternal but instead it feels fresh and contemporary instinct and is blowsy, hardened, without losing any of the style and texture bitter, yet very shrewd, while her spiky, of the 1960s. This is a play where you can angry daughter Jo appears, sadly, to almost smell the poverty — the cheap be doomed to copying her mother’s furnishings, greasy kitchenette, and soured toxic example. Both characters are milk, a play seeping with hopelessness, but emotionally malnourished (displaying sparkling with humour too. the vicious circle of neglectful parenting) and, although appearing to Moira Davies, Assistant Editor, BJGP. barely tolerate each other, yearn to Email: [email protected] be closer, but are lacking the skills. Jo wants a real mother; one who DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X707933

78 British Journal of General Practice, February 2020