A TASTE OF HONEY. To 12 November.
Scotland
A TASTE OF HONEY
by Shelagh Delaney
TAG Theatre Tour to 12 November 2005
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 October at North Edinburgh Arts Centre
Reliable revival going the rounds.
After all this time suffering English actors’ stage-Scottish accents (think of all those Macbeth castles full of everyone talking English received pronunciation except the Porter), the Scottish actors in this touring production show a skill with Salford-speak that puts southerners to shame. Occasionally a Scottish tone slips in mid-sentence, but generally the quality’s high and doesn’t get in the way of flexible expression. The pace of Guy Hollands’ production is swift, making it a surprise the show lasts well into its 3rd hour.
A small-scale touring production, TAG’s Honey is simply staged, an arc of shabby doors suggesting the unstable mobility in the lives of unmarried mother Helen and her teenage daughter Jo in late fifties Salford; a rough life of rent-avoiding moonlight flits, putting up with colds caught in damp rooms and taking the brief pleasures referred to in the title if, and when, possible. Jennifer Black plays Helen as still attractive, with a shell prepared to bounce away life as it’s thrown at her. ‘Now’ is the extent of her eternity. When they arrive at a new, rundown flat it’s Joe who searches around, looks at the industrial prospect from the window (an abattoir) while Helen sits, feeling sorry for herself and reaches for the alcohol (the ‘daily bread’ she prays for).
Lightness of manner shows Helen avoiding any serious question right up to her final, evasively flip comment, when Jo announces her baby’s father is black and Helen leaves – we don’t know for how long – walking out on her daughter as she presents an unexpected complication. The play’s most interesting question is how much Jo is an embryo Helen. Samantha Young gives a deeply-felt performance. She can be as sparky as her mother, especially with Geof, who ironically offers what she needs: stability and support without undue emotional expectations. Young emphasises Jo’s genetic fears when Helen, in an unusually elegiac moment, reveals her dad was a one-day fling with mental problems, and when recalling this revelation with Geof. Decent performances from the men, but it’s rightly the women who provide the heart of this Honey.
Helen: Jennifer Black
Geof: Martin O’Connor
Boyfriend: Tunde Makinde
Peter: Alan Steele
Jo: Samantha Young
Director: Guy Hollands
Designer: Neil Warmington
Lighting: Paul Sorley
Sound: John Irvine
Movement: Natasha Guinessy
Dialect coach: Ros Steen
2005-11-09 08:25:38