A Taste of Honey: A Play Paperback – January 11, 1994

I think Morrissey likes this author. Quite humorous and deals with social issues that are still relevant. Suitable for all ages but not for boomers.

Glad to have A Taste of Honey as part of our collection. This new copy replaces an old brown but much loved earlier edition.

was an interesting story... and the ending leaves you to wonder what happened?

Excellent

This is a great read. Now I know why Morrissey wrote 'This Night Has Opened My Eyes'.

In the late fifties Shelagh Delaney was the Wunderkind of the British theatre. Her first play, “A Taste of Honey”, written when she was only 19, premiered at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1958 and transferred to the West End early the following year after being highly praised by the critics. It is, like Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger”, an example of what has been known as “kitchen sink” theatre. This was a type of social-realist drama which concentrated on the lives of the British working class, a class which had largely been overlooked by dramatists of previous generations. Even a left-wing playwright like J B Priestly showed a marked preference for middle-class drawing-room settings, something which made him a particular bete noire of the angry young men of the kitchen sink movement. This movement was not confined to the theatre; there were also kitchen sink novelists such as Alan Sillitoe, kitchen sink television writers such as Ken Loach and kitchen sink films; “A Taste of Honey” was made into a film title in 1961.The play is not quite as party political as “Look Back in Anger”, but in some ways it is even more radical, because Delaney addresses social issues hitherto regarded as taboo in the theatre, such as inter-racial relationships, unmarried motherhood and homosexuality. (This last remained taboo even though some of the older generation of dramatists, such as Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan, were themselves gay). The action takes place in Salford, a working-class district of Manchester, in the late 1950s. The main characters are Jo, a seventeen-year-old girl, and her mother Helen whom Delaney describes as a “semi-whore”, meaning that she makes a living by sponging off wealthy men.The title refers to the desire of both Jo and Helen for a “taste of honey”, that is to say a period of happiness, even a brief one, in their otherwise drab lives. Both hope to achieve happiness through romantic relationships with men, Jo with her black boyfriend and Helen with Peter, a well-to-do car dealer who is younger than she and who becomes her husband. Jo’s boyfriend is normally referred to simply as “the Boy”, although we learn that his real name is Jimmy. In neither case does the relationship succeed; Jimmy, a sailor. goes back to sea, leaving Jo pregnant, and Helen’s marriage is doomed to failure by Peter’s womanising. The only other character is Geoffrey, a gay student who becomes Jo’s platonic friend and helps care for the baby after it is born. Geoffrey’s homosexuality is more explicit here than it is in the film version, where it is implied from Geoffrey’s rather effeminate manner but never expressly stated. In 1961 the British Board of Film Censors had only ever allowed one film, “Victim”, dealing openly with the subject of homosexuality.One or two minor matters suggest that this is an apprentice work. In the first scene Jo and Helen both break the “fourth wall” and speak directly to the audience, generally to make some sarcastic comment about the other, but later in the play this does not happen, suggesting that Delaney changed her mind at an early stage about what sort of play she intended this to be but without revising what she had already written. There is also the curious matter of Jo’s schooling. When the play opens she is still at school but then leaves to begin a job; this takes place in winter, halfway through the school year, when she is seventeen, nearly eighteen. In the 1950s school students normally left school at fifteen or sixteen; the few who stayed on into the sixth form (something which generally involved an element of financial sacrifice for working-class families) did so in order to take the A-Levels which would lead to a professional qualification or place at university. To stay on for a year and a half and then leave a few months before A-Levels would have been odd indeed.Delaney may have been a Wunderkind, but she was to prove a one-hit Wunderkind. She only wrote one more stage play, “The Lion in Love”, which was not a success when first produced and is today largely forgotten. (Her subsequent work was confined to writing scripts for films and TV dramas”). “A Taste of Honey”, however, is far from forgotten. It is still regularly revived on the stage and studied as a set text for Eng Lit exams. The continuing interest in the play is, in my view, well-deserved despite a few adolescent gaucheries of the type discussed in the last paragraph. The dialogue is often sharp and witty and is written in more naturalistic working-class language than that of the very rhetorical “Look Back in Anger”. In Jo and Geoffrey, perhaps even in Helen who is not always obviously likeable, Delaney is able to create characters who are flawed and who can yet arouse our sympathies. This is a play which came as a breath of fresh air into the British theatre of its day.

Delaney wrote this little masterpiece when she was only 18 years old, thus putting her among the ranks of Jane Auten and the like--though Delaney far surpases the young Austen in readability and emotional power.Any fans of Morrissey and The Smiths will find this work extremely interesting, as Moz has said in many interviews that at least 50% of his songs come from this work. Reading it, one can see exactly why Morrissey took such a liking to this play, it being a parallel (in many ways) to his own childhood landscape. As soon as I finished the last line of this play, I sighed, closed the book, opened it to the first page, and read it all over again. To sum up the profundity of this work I will use a quote that Morrissey used regarding Marr's guitar compositions: "you will cry for hours and hours and swim in the tears."

I found this play to be both fascinating and not the least boring. As said before, perhaps it is too British, but that is what the play is about; trying to find a moment of happiness in a post-war society that saps the very life out of you and stops you from ever bettering yourself. The storyline may seem "simplistic" at first, but the richness of dialogue and its subtlety make for interesting reading and thought.If you have a pre-occupation with our drab and dreary little island then I would hartly reccommend this play, as it is very true to what it sets out to be. However, if you're "lucky" enough to live in a warmer climate then maybe this play just won't be your cup of tea...