London Theatre News

A Taste of Honey: 'its revolutionary verve is powerfully realised'

Following a national tour, Bijan Sheibani's revival of Shelagh Delaney's 1958 play A Taste of Honey opened at London's Trafalgar Studios on Monday 9 December 2019.
When her mother Helen runs off with a car salesman, feisty teenager Jo takes up with Jimmie, a sailor who promises to marry her, before he heads for the seas. Art student Geof moves in and assumes the role of surrogate parent until, misguidedly, he sends for Helen and their unconventional setup unravels.
The cast features Jodie Prenger as 'Helen' and Gemma Dobson as 'Jo'.
When this production opened Nick Curtis in the London Evening Standard wrote that it "stars a magnificently blowsy Jodie Prenger as combative single mother Helen," adding that "the play felt ponderous and dated when Bijan Sheibani's production first appeared in 2014, but now its revolutionary verve is more powerfully realised." In the Daily Express, Neil Norman highlighted how "Bijan Sheibani's production captures the restlessness, the hopelessness and the indomitable spirit of Shelagh Delaney's characters as they stumble through a world of brutish men and subsistence sex with a raucous, scathing wit."
A Taste of Honey continues at the Trafalgar Studios in London up to Saturday 29 February 2020 - read more....