It’s been over fifty years since an 18-year-old British working class girl named Shelagh Delaney helped revolutionize the British theatre scene with her gritty, no-holds-barred play about what life was like in the sooty margins for the working poor in industrialized cities north of London. Delaney was determined to pen a work stripped of any romanticized or idealized notions about the grim predicaments that they faced - and what emerged was the groundbreaking A Taste of Honey. Virago Theatre Company’s A Taste of Honey, playing now through Feb. 25, pays homage to Delaney’s unflinching honesty with this bold and compelling production that offers a starkly realistic look into the social issues of early 1960’s England.
At the heart of the story is Jo (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a seventeen-year-old girl who has no choice but to follow her alcoholic mother, Helen (Michaela Greeley) from one slum dwelling to the next. Helen can’t keep her act together long enough for her daughter to plant roots and she doesn’t seem to possess a maternal bone in her body. So how can she care for her daughter when she can’t even care for herself? Jo rails against her mother but she also craves her love and attention. When Helen goes off with the latest in a string of boyfriends, Jo is left to fend for herself. We get the impression that this isn’t the first time.
Lundy-Paine is marvelous as the gutsy Jo who is disillusioned and angry yet determined to build a life for herself. The actress strikes just the right note between despair and hope as she argues with her mother and defends herself against Helen’s constant barrage of criticism. Greeley is outstanding as the crass, self-indulgent and sexually charged Helen. When her latest fancy man, the sleazy Peter (David Bicha) comes around she doesn’t seem to care that her daughter is in the room as she undulates against him, much to Jo’s dismay.
It’s while her mother is off with Peter that Jo meets Jimmie (the dashing Daniel Redmond) a black sailor who charms her with a breezy smile and a niceness that she’s never experienced before. Oh, the joys of first love and the taste of honeyed sweetness that it brings into Jo’s life. But as quickly as he appears Jimmie’s gone, before even Jo knows that she’s pregnant with his child. What's sad is that she had no expectation that he would stay.
While Delaney’s inclusion of a biracial relationship (not to mention a biracial baby) has rightly lost its shock value for today’s audience, it was quite scandalous in late 1950’s, early 1960's Britain. Scandalous - yet oddly refreshing (to read the reviews of the time) to see revealed onstage the hopelessness that abject poverty created in the lives of the British working class.
Just as Delaney didn’t pull any punches in making her characters as genuine as possible, director Laura Lundy-Paine doesn’t hold back either. In her hands the bitter-sweet drama is uncompromising in its slice-of-life view yet it never becomes disheartening. Lundy-Paine lifts up moments of lightness and comedy and lets them become small “tastes of honey” in the grand scheme of the play.
Jo finally meets a man who gives her the stability, warmth and friendship that she craves - and he’s gay – certainly another taboo subject at the time. (And even now it isn’t always safe to be out.) His name is Geof and he's a young art student. Played with brilliant subtlety by Brian Martin, who wisely eschews a caricatured portrayal, Geof is befriended by Jo when his landlady finds out he’s gay and promptly evicts him. So, even though he’s able to attend art school, society’s rules about homosexuality serve to knock him down. He winds up on Jo’s couch and in her heart. Both of them are in desperate straits - misfits adrift -but the pain of it all seems easier to face together.
The entire play takes place in the latest flat (apartment) that Jo’s mother has found for them. Julie Gillespie’s set design is suitably dank and dark. The audience is greeted with a proscenium arch made up of a mismatch of thrift store-ish clothing anchored on either side by old suitcases. Soon enough we understand that Jo and Helen never stay in one place long enough to unpack. Dirty artist’s drop cloths create something of a ceiling, their seemingly random use eventually evoking wistful angst when we find out that Jo has a talent for drawing and that art school is not in the cards for her.
