Sophie Christiana: A Taste of Honey

On Saturday Mum and I travelled up to London for the day to watch the play A Taste of Honey, which is currently running at the National Theatre.

We began the morning at the Barbican (I'll blog another post about that later) and then walked over to St Paul's, before crossing the millennium bridge and heading towards the South Bank for lunch.

Mum was desperate to have a look at the book market which is just outside the theatre. She rummages at carboots and second hand stalls for vintage books with interesting covers and then reinvents them by transforming them into notebooks. This is her website if you're interested: Vintage Notebook

Afterwards we headed into the theatre and took our seats for the show.

The play is a revival of British dramatist Shelagh Delaney’s first play, written when she was only eighteen. After initially intending to write a novel, Delaney later decided that the declining nature of British theatre meant it needed it more and it premiered at the Theatre Royal Strafford East in 1958. There is also a film version.

Set in Salford in North West England in the 50s it is a gritty depiction of working class life in post-war England, exploring hot potato topics such as class, race and sexuality. Part of the genre that would later become known as “kitchen sink” drama, it offers a stark portrayal of the sharp realities of working class life for one mother and her daughter. Delaney was part of a new wave of writers who were attempting to produce theatre that was more naturalistic and less theatrical and she threw herself into portraying taboo subjects that are intended to shock audiences.

The play opens with the teenage Jo and her mum Helen after they have just arrived at their new lodgings in a rundown and dingy flat. Helen is a chain smoking, good time girl, and although not quite a lady of the night, she is defined by her loose morals. Her loving, but dysfunctional relationship with her daughter is at the centre of the play's drama. As a single mother Helen has had to keep herself and her daughter afloat, which she does, not by working a traditional desk job, but through her choice of men, the flaunting of her sexuality, her style of clothes and her body.

As events unfold, the feisty Jo, in her final few months of school, begins a courtship with a young black sailor called Geoff. Her tenacious mother has also just embarked on a relationship with a rich car sales man called Peter, who is half her age.

Act two opens with Jo, pregnant and alone, after her sailor has left her and gone back to sea. Abandoned by her mother who has married Peter and moved in with him, Jo is looked after by her friend Geoffrey, a gay art student who assumes the role of mother, father and housekeeper, cooking, cleaning and knitting clothes for the baby.

The play draws to a close after Helen returns to the flat, having left the abusive and alcoholic Peter. Meanwhile Jo has just gone into labour and announced to her horrified mother that the baby will most likely be mixed race. Geoffrey disappears having been told to sling his hook by Helen and after that the curtains close and you are left wondering what this new chapter will bring for the mother and daughter duo and how on earth they will possible cope.

The play is first and foremost a tale of mothers and daughters. Lesley Sharp (most recently in the ITV drama Scott & Bailey) plays Helen and Kate O’Flynn her daughter. Both produce highly convincing portraits of two women who are more alike than they would care to admit and their endless energy makes it hard to take your eyes off the stage even for a moment.

Although comic with many tongue in cheek moments, the story is also an emotional one, seen in the tragedy of a young girl repeating the mistakes that her mother so desperately wanted her to avoid. Seemingly an unmaternal, sexually indiscriminate woman, you come to realise that Helen nurtures a caring instinct behind her flighty exterior. Whilst the various men put on good supporting roles the real focus is on the two women at the heart of this story, both of whom need someone to look after them. The pervading strength of the female spirit reigns supreme in this deprived, battered and run down part of Britain that offers little hope of escape for its inhabitants.