A Taste of Honey
(20TH CENTURY SOCIO-POLITICAL DRAMA)
Title of play: A Taste of Honey
Date of first stage
performance: First performed in
1958 by Joan Littlewood's Theatre
Workshop Company in London.
Date of film adaptation: 1961, Tony Richardson.
Author: Shelagh Delaney
Author’s date & place of
birth: 1938 – Salford, Lancashire.
3 significant details of
author’s personal circumstances/times in which play was written:
·
Having failed her eleven-plus examination,
Delaney left school at the age of sixteen. She had several jobs, including
usherette and shop assistant but all she wanted to do was write.
·
When
the play was performed with acclaim there was a concern that too much praise
for the play’s nineteen-year-old author would make it difficult for her to ever
create another hit play, as the success might prove so intimidating that she
could never live up to her first accomplishment. In a sense, this is what
happened, since Delaney never wrote another play that achieved the success of A
Taste of Honey.
·
When
Shelagh Delaney began working on A Taste of Honey, she intended the
material to be a novel but instead changed it into a play after seeing a Terence
Rattigan play. She felt that Rattigan nor the other playwrights of the time
were writing about the sort of people and places she knew of, nor were they
dealing with real social issues. The theatre of the 1950s seemed to her to be
presenting “safe, sheltered, cultured lives in charming surroundings- not life
as the majority of ordinary people know it [… ] I had strong ideas about what I
wanted to see in the theatre […] Usually North Country people were shown as
gormless whereas in actual fact they are very alive and cynical.”[1]
Structure of play: Setting,
Acts/scenes, timescale
Set in a flat in Manchester.
Act 1, Act 2 scenes 1&2.
The entire story plays out in a ‘dingy
flat’ in Manchester and there are scenes on the street (like the walk between
Boy and Jo). The play takes place over a few months.
Characterisation: Main
characters in play & very brief summary of Personality/Role in
play/Illustrative quotation
Helen is described as a ‘semi-whore’, who drinks too much. She
comes across very witty but cold towards her daughter, Jo. She also
appears unable to organise her life own life and so is always moving. This is a
source of conflict between Helen and her daughter, Jo. Jo asks:
“JO: Why did we come here anyway? We were
alright at the other place.
HELEN: I was fed up
with the other place.
JO: You mean you’re
running away from somebody.
HELEN: You’re asking
for a bloody good hiding, lady…” (Act I, sc. I, page 15)
In this conversation we get a sense of Jo’s resentment at her mother’s
nomadic lifestyle. Their constant squabbling also makes the relationship between
mother and daughter seems more like that of peers, which is further emphasised
by Jo addressing her mother by her first name.
Josephine or Jo, appears as a sullen teenager. She has ambition to be
more than her mother because she despises her mother’s attitude to life. However,
there is a strong sense that she wants to be taken care of and be included in
her mother’s life:
Jo says to Peter, “…. What are you going to do
about me Peter? The snotty nosed daughter? Don’t you think I’m a bit young to
be left like this on my own while you flit off with my old woman?”(Act I, Sc.
II, 34)
Helen’s response is, “We can’t take her with us. We
will be, if you’ll not take exception to the phrase, on our honeymoon.”(Act I,
Sc. II, 35)
Peter, appears to be a wealthy, brash and
sexually demanding man, who appears eager to marry Helen at the beginning of
the play. He adds dimension to the mother-daughter relationship between Helen
and Jo. Peter seems to see Jo as barrier
to enjoying Helena’s company, while Jo seems to resent and envy and Peter’s
relationship with her mother.
“PETER: [He embraces HELEN at the door and begins to
tell her a dirty story]
[…]
JO: Hey! What sort of
cigar is that?
PETER: Why don’t you
go home to your father?
Jo: He’s dead.
Peter: Too bad,” (Act
I, Sc. I, 20)
Geoffrey, Caring, sensitive gay man who has
become good friends with Jo, as he eventually moves in with her when Jo’s
mother leaves to get married. He offers to marry Jo:
“Geof: Marry me,
Jo.
Jo: Don’t
breathe all over me like that, you sound like a horse. I’m not marrying
anybody.” (Act
II, Sc. I, 58)
Jo gets the
nurturing and caring from Geof that she never received from her mother, despite
this she treats Geof as badly as her mother treated her, which shows that in
many ways Jo is just like her mother.
The Boy (Jimmy), is a young cheerful
black boy around Jo’s age. He is a male nurse in the Navy. He has a crucial
role in fathering Joy’s baby. The relationship between him and Jo is painted as
foolish, young love. The Boy proposes to Jo even though they have not known
each other long:
“BOY:…I’m a man
of few words. Will you marry me?
JO: Well, I’m a
girl of few words. I won’t marry you but you’ve talked me into it.” (Act I, Sc.
II, 23)
Their exchange, like
the tone of most of the play is playful, light and humorous.
Dramaturgy
& language: choose a two page extract and comment on the choice of language
and dramatic effects:
Act, Scene & page number:
(Act II, sc. II, 79-80)
In this scene Helen
has come back home to Jo. Helen does not like Geoffrey’s friendship with her
daughter or his presence within the home; this is evident by Helen’s attempts
to dominate the room by constantly chatting with Jo while simultaneously trying
to dislodge Geoffrey from the flat by ignoring him. Helen asks Geoffrey: “Look
love. I’ve come to talk to my daughter. Can you make yourself scarce for a
bit?” while at the same time bullying him and making homophobic comments
referring to him as: “a little freak!”, a “Bloody little pansy…” and also
mocking his interests by exclaiming: “Good God, does he knit an’ all?”
Although Helen’s
language is homophobic and her attitude, as well as her hostility, towards
Geoffrey, implies that her hostility towards Geoffrey is not actually based on
his sexual preferences and femininity but on her jealousy about Jo and
Geoffrey’s close relationship. This idea is reinforced through language in
various instances: as Helen tries to turn Jo against Geoffrey by insulting him
and also by Helen’s constant attempts to distract Jo from Geoffrey, for example
when Jo tries to defend Geoffrey from Helen’s insults, Helen quickly changes
the subject, asking Jo “Hey look at this Jo, isn’t it pretty? Oh, I love
babies- aren’t they lovely?”
Interestingly
this scene, depicting Helen’s antagonism towards Jo’s pseudo- boyfriend, is
reminiscent to an earlier scene (in Act I scene I) where Jo jealously tries to
freeze Peter from their home and out of Helen’s life.
Socio-political Themes: how
they are presented; 2 quotations to illustrate each (with Act, Scene, page
number)
1.
Education: Sense that education is
irrelevant and unimportant and to be endured till it is legal to leave. Jo is
intent on leaving school:
Helen
to Jo:
“you
still set on leaving school at Christmas?
Jo:
Yes
Helen:
What are you going to do?”
Jo:
Get out of your sight as soon as I can get a bit of money in my pocket.” (Act
I, Sc. I, 12)
Helen
says Jo about her art:
“Have
you thought of ever going to a proper art school and getting a proper training?
Jo:
It’s too late.
I’ll
pay, you’re not stupid. You’ll soon learn.” (Act I, Sc. I, 15)
2. Class/Race: The play has a lower class vibe– indicated
by language, colloquialisms and sense of place and indicated through stage
directions:
“The Stage represents a comfortless flat in
Manchester…” (Act I, Sc. I, 7)
Race
relations- Boy quotes Othello to Jo, which is significant given their shared
colour:
“BOY:
Why do you object to the “gross clasps of the lascivious Moor?”
JO:
Who said that?
BOY:
Shakespeare in Othello
[…]
BOY:
Let me be your Othello and you my Desdemona.”
(Act
I, Sc. II, 38)
JO
to BOY:
“Sometimes
you look three thousand years old. Did your ancestors come from Africa?
BOY:
No. Cardiff. Disappointed? Were you hoping to marry a man whose father beat the
tom-tom all night?
JO:
I don’t care where you were born. There’s still a bit of jungle in you
somewhere…”
(Act I, Sc. II, 25)
“HELEN: You mean to say that…that sailor was a
black man? ...Oh my God! Nothing else can happen to me now. Can you see me
wheeling a pram with a…Oh my God. I’ll have a drink.” (Act II, Sc. II, 86)
The play was written in 1958. So elements of the play
would have been shocking and would have scandalised many of the audience
members- issues of sex outside marriage, illegitimacy, homosexuality, abortion,
inter-racial relationships and babies of mixed race were all disapproved of and
regarded as illicit or even illegal.
3. Gender: Although it is clear that Helen’s poverty is partly due to her own lack of
ambition, will-power and sense of her own worth- it is also clear that she also
finds herself in this situation because of the role of women in 1950s society; and
their dependent upon men. During the play she is dependent upon Peter, she does
not marry him for love but, as she says: “He’s got a wallet full of reasons.”
We learn that she has relied on men all throughout her life during talk about
her previous husbands:
“JO:
He was rich wasn’t he…
HELEN:
He was a rat!
JO:
He was your husband. Why did you marry him?
HELEN:
At the time I had nothing better to do…” (Act I, Sc. II, 28)
Gay/Homosexuality
relations are also
explored in the play-Geoff is Gay man- he appears very feminine in some ways by
knitting baby clothes and being sensitive to Jo’s needs. However on the other
hand he wants to have sexual relations with Jo, marry her and he wants them to
raise the baby together. “JO: Would you
like to be the father of my baby, Geoffrey?
GEOF:
Yes, I would.” (Act II, Scene I, 57)
There
is a suggestion that perhaps because of the contextual setting of the play
(1950s), that, just as the women in the play like Helen need men for protection
against the harshness of society- so too does Geof as a gay man need Jo as
protection against societies prejudice towards homosexuals.
4. Power: Man’s power over women, exhibited in
Peter’s power over Helen when he forces her to choose between him and her own
daughter:
“PETER:…I
dragged you out of the gutter once. If you want to go back there it’s all the
same to me…
[…]
PETER:
Helen…[Calling]…come on!” (Act II, Sc. I, 68-9)
There
is also Helen’s power over her daughter, emotional power – mother-daughter bond,
which is why she is able to breeze so easily back into her daughter’s life:
Original and
later Critical comments/reviews – 3 quotations
Original reviews:
Milton
Shulman gave a scathing review in the Evening Standard. He felt that the play
was "about as convincing as some dream fantasy watched through a
distorting mirror", and that its young author "knows as much about
adult behaviour as she does about elephants". He gave her a reading list:
Shaw, Ibsen, O'Casey, Anouilh and Williams.- 1958, Milton Shulman, Evening
Standard.
“…the
first English play I’ve seen in which a coloured man, and a queer boy, are
presented as natural characters, factually without a nudge or shoulder. It is
also the first play I can remember about working-class people that entirely
escapes being a “working-class play”: no patronage, no dogma, just the thing as
it is, taken straight. In general hilarious and sardonic, the play has
authentic lyrical moments arising naturally from the very situations that
created the hilarity…it gives a final overwhelming impression of good health-
of a feeling for life that is positive, sensible and generous.”-Colin Macinnes,
Encounter (1959)
“…all
the freshness of Mr Osbourne’s Look Back
in Anger and a greater maturity.” – Graham Greene
A
Taste of Honey
Venue: Theatre Royal Where: York Date Reviewed: April, 2004.
Venue: Theatre Royal Where: York Date Reviewed: April, 2004.
“…in
the capable hands of director Damien Cruden and designer Dawn Allsop. The
seediness and grime of a Northern city in the late 50s are vividly brought to
life in a set featuring a cobbled street complete with staircase and manhole
cover, lines of grubby washing and the squalid flat shared by young Jo and her
prostitute mother Helen. Fans of the 1961 film will probably be surprised by
the sheer theatricality of the play - characters address the audience directly
and break into song and dance when the spirit moves them, the set is cleverly
lit to suggest a nightclub atmosphere at appropriate moments, and we never for
a moment mistake the play for the kitchen-sink drama of its era (which perhaps
explains why the black and gay characters are remarkable for their inclusion,
not for any revolutionary insights into their lives). Although there were
moments when I found the pace a little slow, Cruden generally keeps the drama
bowling along and makes the most of the semi-musical aspects. - J. D. Atkinson
3
Other plays of the period (19.50.s) with
details of author/date/very brief summary of plot
John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956): Follows protagonist Jimmy, an ‘angry young
man’. The play is about a love triangle involving an intelligent but
disaffected Jimmy Porter, his upper-middle-class, impassive wife Alison, and
her haughty best friend Helena Charles. The play is
said to be an autobiographical piece based on Osborne's own unhappy
marriage.
Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1958): Stanley Webber is visited in his boarding
house by strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An innocent-seeming birthday party for
Stanley turns into a nightmare when after a few glasses of whiskey and a
game of blind man’s bluff, Goldberg and McCann drag Stanley off to an upstairs
room, and by morning they rendered him a mute.
Among the themes in the play are: the failure of language to serve as an
adequate tool of communication, the use of place as a sanctum that is violated
by menacing intruders, and the surrealistic confusions that obscure or distort
fact.
Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Soup
with Barley
(1956): The play is about the Jewish Kahn
family living in 1936 in London, and traces the downfall of their ideals in a
changing world, parallel to the disintegration of the family, until 1956. The
protagonists are the parents, Sarah and Harry, and their children, Ada, and
Ronnie. Sarah is an adamant Socialist; she is strong, family-minded, honest though bossy; Harry,
her husband, is weak, a liar, not at all manly and lacks conviction; Ada is
extremely passionate about what she believes in, especially Marxism,
and, like the others, is also romantic both personally and politically; and
finally Ronnie is a youthful idealist and just as romantic as Ada.
The family are Jewish Communists, and Wesker explores how they struggle to maintain their convictions in the face of World War II, Stalinism, or the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
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