029 – A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
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Published 15th July
Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey caused a sensation when it premiered in 1958 at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London. It’s portrayal of a working class single mother and her daughter batting to survive on the margins of society in post-war Manchester was radical in its frankness and form, and also for boldly featuring a mixed-race relationship as well as a young homosexual in central roles. The play was all the more striking for being written by an eighteen-year old girl from Salford who had recently failed her school exams, but who was determined to write about the world she knew and that she did not see represented in the literature or drama she devoured.
Delaney speculatively sent a draft of her first play to the renowned director Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Royal in London, who recognised the raw talent in the text and helped to develop the play, employing her trademark improvisation techniques and adding music and dance to create a self-consciously theatrical production. The result was an historic production that went on to transfer to London’s West End for a long run, and then onto New York in 1960, before being made into a film in 1962.
A Taste of Honey was ahead of its time, as confirmed by the fact that it has become a staple in the dramatic canon, most recently in a wonderful production at the National Theatre in 2014, which was revived at the Trafalgar Studios and on tour in 2019. The play continues to ask questions relevant to our time on attitudes to sex, race, class and gender.
I’m delighted to be joined in this episode by Nadine Holdsworth, Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick. Nadine has not only written extensively about the theatre of Joan Littlewood, she herself also appeared in a production A Taste of Honey when she was at university and the play has been special for her ever since.
Nadine Holdsworth
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick. Her book English Theatre and Social Abjection: A Divided Nation published in 2020 examines how contemporary drama presents groups and issues that divide our society. She has also written two books on Joan Littlewood, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre published by Cambridge University Press in 2011, and a volume on Joan Littlewood in the Routledge series of Performance Practitioners. Her research addresses questions of representation, participation, citizenship, political change and cultural value. She is a currently working on a new body of research on arts and homelessness.
Recommended Play
Nadine recommended Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads by Roy Williams.
The Footnotes to our episode on A Taste of Honey include thoughts on the sins of the mother, and Shelagh Delaney’s real people.
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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg
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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.
Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.
Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.
114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.
I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
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