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Theatre in Review: A Taste of Honey (The Pearl Theatre Co.)

Rachel Botchan, Rebekah Brockman. Photo: Russ Rowland

Nothing ages faster than another season's act of provocation; the plays remembered most for their unusual frankness, their eagerness to shatter taboos, often have surprisingly little to say for themselves a few decades on. All too often, what once was virtually unsayable becomes commonplace, leaving a play without its original raison d'être. I was reminded of this last week in London, seeing a fine production of The Entertainer that, nevertheless, isn't entirely able to disguise the ponderous quality of John Osborne's writing. Osborne, you will recall, was the leader of the Angry Young Men, that cadre of young Turks hell-bent on shaking the British theatre out of its thrall to Terence Rattigan manners and Noël Coward innuendos. Yet Osborne's works, such as the The Entertainer -- and, even more so, Look Back in Anger -- now come across as rather musty bills of complaint, their once savage-seeming tongues dulled by changing times.

Shelagh Delaney never liked to be lumped in with the Angry Young Men; for one thing, she was a woman -- a very, very young woman -- making her way in a British theatre full of male privilege. But she burst on the scene with A Taste of Honey, which, in its willingness to treat any number of sensitive (for the time) topics with unchecked candor, must have been pretty bracing stuff. Delaney's bluntly unsentimental portrait of the relationship between Jo, a flinty, independent -- yet deeply needy -- adolescent, and Helen, her trollop mother, must have been shocking enough; add to it Jo's affair with Jimmy, a black sailor; her pregnancy, with no husband in sight; and her relationship with Geoffrey, the young homosexual man with whom she sets up housekeeping, and you can see what all the fuss was about in 1958. Adding to the impact: Delaney was all of 19.

And yet the current revival suggests why A Taste of Honey so rarely comes our way: Shorn of the sheer thrill of encountering a young writer willing to describe the world as she sees it, in hair-raising detail, this is a rather prosaic, shapeless piece of work, a series of comings and goings that don't add up to a fully realized drama. You can see what was so attention-getting about Delaney's voice in the opening first moments, as mother and daughter enter the seedy "Manchester maisonette" that is to be their new home. For them, things are looking down: "There's a lovely view of the gasworks," notes Helen, adding helpfully that the local slaughterhouse is also nearby. (Such neighbors explain to Jo the presence of that dreadful smell.) It's a distinctly cheerless place: The furniture is ugly, the roof leaks, and the communal bathroom is found somewhere down a long hall. Most of all, there is little love to warm these chilly rooms: Helen, a sometime barmaid, only focuses on her daughter in the brief pauses between one man and the next. She also has a seemingly endless capacity for drink, saying, by way of explanation, "Well, it's one way of passing time while I'm waiting for something to turn up."

This vividly rendered mother-daughter dynamic is probably the element that could speak most directly to today's audiences, but somehow, under Austin Pendleton's direction, the furious cycle of dependency and abandonment, of love and rage, that defines Helen and Jo never really comes to life. The reasons for this are faintly mysterious: Pendleton has a sensitive, meticulous way with a script, as shown by his handling of A Day by the Sea, currently playing at the Mint Theater Company. Rebekah Brockman's approach to Jo is unflinchingly honest, even when the script suggests that, having been raised in an atmosphere of casual cruelty, she has developed something of a heartless streak herself. Rachel Botchan certainly captures Helen's blowsier qualities, including her motormouth, her unconscious sexual strutting, and her need for a drink, any drink, immediately if not sooner. Somehow, however, none of this is enough; to work today, Helen should be played more fiercely, her anger and greed for love almost unbearably close to the surface; similarly, we need a gut appreciation of the yearning for warmth and stability hidden behind Jo's scathing façade. (I'd give anything to have seen Angela Lansbury and Joan Plowright as Helen and Jo in the 1960 Broadway production; I have a funny feeling that prisoners weren't taken when those two ladies went at it.)

The rest of the casting is variable as well. As Peter, Helen's slick, seductive, vicious on-and-off lover, Bradford Cover is hopelessly miscast; he's simply not the cheap, nasty piece of goods that Delaney envisioned. On the other hand, Ade Otukoya makes an excellent impression as Jimmy, the sailor who professes -- charmingly and convincingly -- to be in love with Jo before sleeping with her and vanishing from the story without explanation. And John Evans Reese is someone to watch as Geoffrey, the gentle soul who gradually moves in and takes over, bringing some order and filling the void created in Jo's life by the absences of Helen and Jimmy. Reese is working totally against the odds: The program notes rightfully point out that A Taste of Honey was a victory for women's voices in the theatre; it is, therefore, a pity that Delaney's portrait of the gay Geoffrey is so much a product of the times. He is a largely sexless sad sack, a woman trapped in a man's body. Jo keeps calling him her "sister," adding that he "would make somebody a wonderful wife." Even for 1958, this represents a failure of the imagination; Delaney's intentions were surely the best, yet her patronizing conception of the character is thoroughly grating.

Also awkwardly handled is the play's requirement for a jazz combo onstage; in its early London and Broadway productions the group was placed on the sidelines, but Pendleton has his trio -- trumpet, guitar, and bass -- wander around the set, taking up so much space on the couch that Jo can barely get a seat. This is awkward, to say the least, as is the decision to play the famous title tune, written for the Broadway production but now so associated with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass that it is jarringly out of place in a kitchen sink drama set in the North of England.

Harry Feiner's multilevel set has just the right level of squalor, however, and is placed imaginatively against a charcoal sketch of Manchester rooftops, a touch that strikes the right grimy, dreary note and also alludes to Jo's undeveloped talent for drawing. Barbara A. Bell's costumes, especially Helen's garish outfits, are ideally suited to each character. Eric Southern's lighting and Jane Shaw's sound (and musical supervision) are also solid contributions.

I've been waiting most of my life to see a revival of A Taste of Honey, so I'm grateful to the Pearl Theatre Co. for taking on the task. But if this sometimes-powerful piece is to regain its place in the repertory it will need a far more original and visionary production than it gets here. Until then, it remains a curio. -- David Barbour


(27 September 2016)

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