Saturday, December 6

Tag: A Taste of Honey

A Taste of Honey – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse
North West

A Taste of Honey – Altrincham Garrick Playhouse

Opening the Garrick Studio’s new season of Manchester based plays is the iconic A Taste of Honey. It’s hard to believe that Shelagh Delanay was just 19 years old when she wrote this funny yet furious piece which still manages to hit hard and square 65 years on from its first production. Set in Salford, in a damp and draughty bedsit, we meet Helen and her teenage daughter Jo mid moonlight flit as they decamp from one squalid living quarter to another. Described in the text as a ‘semi-whore’ Helen is a single mother, trying to make ends meet by whatever means she can and grasping on to whatever opportunities may come her way. Jo is weary of their lifestyle and is searching for love and security, for guidance and comfort, where none is likely to emerge. When her mother leaves her for Pe...
A Taste of Honey – Royal Exchange Theatre
North West

A Taste of Honey – Royal Exchange Theatre

In 1958, a 19-year-old Salford girl called Shelagh Delaney went to watch 'Variation on a Theme' by Terence Rattigan at Manchester’s Opera House. Incensed at the portrayal of homosexual relationships in the play, she came out of the theatre thinking she could do something far better, inside two weeks she had written 'A Taste of Honey'. This raw and powerful story of poverty, race and sexuality quickly became a crucial part of the 'British New Wave’ and later supplied Morrissey with half the lyrics on the debut Smiths album. The beating heart of this play is the relationship between Helen (Jill Halfpenny) and her teenage daughter Jo (Rowan Robinson), they are first seen arriving in squalid lodgings in a Salford backstreet with little money and even less hope. Helen is described by Dela...