Theatre
A Taste of Honey
King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Neil Cooper
Three stars
SHELAGH Delaney’s precocious taboo-busting soap opera was always more theatrical than Tony Richardson’s kitchen-sink film version gave it credit for after Joan Littlewood’s original production appeared in 1958. So it goes in Bijan Sheibani’s five-year-old National Theatre production, recast for its current tour, and introduced by pianist David O’Brien’s jazz trio doing an impressive turn as the sort of combo permanently in residence at northern English basement dives of the post war era.
They’re the sort of places Jo’s mum Helen knows well. This is clear by the way Jodie Prenger as Helen leans against the piano as if adorning a pulp fiction paperback, a bottle-blonde would-be diva who wields a lipstick-stained cigarette like a weapon that could stab your eyes out. Gemma Dobson’s Josephine may be able to namedrop the classics, but she and Helen spark off each other with the sort of lacerating love/hate exchanges that binds their spiky and self-destructive relationship like a more feral template for Eddi and Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous.
Set solely in Helen and Jo’s latest fly-by-night flea-pit, Hildegard Bechtler’s elaborate set allows Jo to hold court as the host of a Saturday night variety show might, so each scene is more or less a dramatic duet, first between Jo and Helen before Tom Varey’s boozed-up spiv Peter shows up. Jo’s doomed dalliance with Durone Stokes’ sailor Jimmie subsequently gives way to another kind of domestic bliss with Jo’s gay best friend, Geoffrey, played by Stuart Thompson.
There’s a musicality to Sheibani’s production that goes beyond Benjamin Kwasi Burrell’s live score, with each character having something akin to a theme song. For Geoffrey it’s Mad About The Boy, while Jimmie does a mean doo-wop version of Burns’ My Love is Like a Red Red Rose. While never overplayed by Prenger, Helen’s early asides point up what is structured more like a set of vaudevillian turns punctuated by Delaney’s ricocheting dialogue that goes some way to prove it’s not always grim up north.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here