The Sweetest Revival: A Taste of Honey

Shelagh Delaney's 1950s masterpiece A Taste of Honey comes to the Lowry in a revival with Rebecca Ryan, star of TV's Shameless, in the lead role. We ponder the longevity of this 'magic play'

Feature by Conori Bell-Bhuiyan | 03 Jun 2014

There are a handful of plays that never leave our stage, remaining relevant and touching to us all. Shelagh Delaney’s social realist classic, A Taste of Honey, is one such jewel: a magic play that refuses to fade or lose its touch. Its longevity has been recently demonstrated. It emerged in the Edinburgh Lyceum last year and just this May wrapped up a critically acclaimed run at the National. Now the play continues its revival with a tour that started at Hull Truck in March and reaches the Lowry in Salford this month.  

A Taste of Honey tells the story of spirited teenager Jo, a girl with a mind of her own and problems to match. She’s constantly bickering or rebelling against her acerbic, bullying mother Helen, and determinedly looking for something to add a spark of passion to her downtrodden life. She finds that something in a romance with a black sailor, but is left adrift and in trouble when he is called away and she finds herself pregnant. Fiercely independent, Jo makes the decision to leave school and keep her baby. After her mother’s unceremonious departure (car salesman in tow), Jo finds a friend – and a surrogate parent for her child – in an unconventional gay art student by the name of Geoff, but their shaky security can only last so long. The play churns with the ugly undertones of prejudice, rearing its head in areas of race, gender, class and sexuality. It is unarguably a socially significant story, and a story of the 50s when it was written – but at its heart this is a family story (albeit a fairly dysfunctional one) and it is rich in themes that will always resonate with its audience.

It is one thing, however, to brand a play ‘timeless’ and another to make it fresh and new for the world of the modern audience. Nonetheless, it is a challenge producers eagerly take on time and time again. Yes, some scripts are potent enough to breach centuries, but it takes a good director and the right cast to bring a flavour of originality to each revival. Sometimes this takes a bit of tweaking… Take Anya Reiss and Ben Kidd’s new version of Frank Wedekind’s 1906 Spring Awakening (recently leaving the Liverpool Playhouse to commence a cross-country tour), written so many years ago and yet frighteningly relevant. The divisive and definitive play has much in common with Delaney’s – both causing a stir upon release, sparking riots with their no-holds-barred scrutiny of the teenage experience and provocative examination of sexual discovery. Yet, like A Taste of Honey, it manages to be both dark and moving and incredibly witty at the same time. With a dynamic young cast and carefully re-worked and re-written by Reiss (thus fitting seamlessly into the modern age) the surface of the play may have been polished, but the central question – are young people shaped by a prior generation that doesn’t understand them? – remains the same, and just as poignant and powerful.


“It’s got everything that a great play should have. It’s gritty, it’s funny, it’s tender” – Rebecca Ryan


A Taste of Honey, on the other hand, needs no rewrite to catapult it into the 21st century – its youthful touch will be provided, as it originally was, by its feisty lead and the talented young actress who brings her to life. Rebecca Ryan is best known for her parts in TV dramas such as Shameless and The State of Play but a well-timed move to the stage has enhanced her reputation as a promising name. Well acquainted with Jo, having previously tackled the character in Edinburgh, Ryan is notably excited to take on the role again. She describes Jo as a character who is as exciting to play as she is challenging: “She goes up and down and up and down. One minute she’s happy and she’s great, and the next minute she’s angry. That’s really exciting for me to play – to get those moments when, within a line, she goes from being really happy to really frustrated. It’s a challenge in itself to try and get those moments right.”

Just like Jo (and Shelagh Delaney herself, who was only 19 years old when she wrote the play) Rebecca Ryan is a native of Manchester. It’s through casting young, vibrant and exciting actors like her that directors get the opportunity to give scripts like A Taste of Honey a new lease of life and there is little doubt that Ryan’s version of Jo will be one the more youthful audiences of Manchester will come to know and love.

Ryan is quick to agree that the script itself is deserving of its longevity in the spotlight. “It is always relevant,” she says. “It is one of those plays that is always there… it’s got everything that a great play should have. It’s gritty, it’s funny, it’s tender – it’s got all of those different elements in it.” She continues by musing that the themes on prejudice and isolation aren’t as far in the past as many of us would like to think – not just the homophobia and racism expressed by characters in the play, but the circumstances of its heroine. Despite how desperately she clings to her independence, the circumstances of Jo’s life are so far out of her control that no matter which way she turns, disaster seems inevitable. Her harsh and deflecting wit may not make her the sweetest, most likeable character around, but her snippy-ness is justifiable and her determination, however misplaced, shows a strength that hides a vulnerable fragility. Ryan, with her own determination and fresh vitality, is a fitting choice to bring Delaney’s multifaceted, imperfect, yet utterly compelling protagonist to life.

So what is the secret ingredient that makes these plays stick in our minds – and in our theatres? What is the key to writing a play that will last? Of course, the real answer to that is ‘who knows?’ We’ll never really understand why some plays come to stay and some get lost in the mists of time, but both Spring Awakening and A Taste of Honey have two things in common that may have contributed to their staying power: youth and taboos. Two things that go together pretty well, when you think about it. Admittedly, taboos diminish over time, and A Taste of Honey may not seems quite as confrontational now as it did when Delaney first penned it, but the struggles against inequality, racism and discrimination are by no means lost in modern society. The struggles young people face when finding their own way in the world are timeless and universally relatable, and characters like Rebecca Ryan’s sharp-tongued, sharp-witted Jo speak volumes to anyone who is – or has the slightest memory of ever having been – a teenager.

A Taste of Honey runs 10-14 June at Salford's Lowry. Tickets start at £18

http://www.thelowry.com/event/a-taste-of-honey1