A Taste of Honey, Trafalgar Studios - ★★★★ - Until February 29, 2020


So many of today's hot button issues are here: poverty, class, racism and homophobia. Shelagh Delaney touched on all of them in her groundbreaking play of 1958 and her work still resonates. The story of adolescent, Jo, and her overbearing mother, Helen, is still touching and disturbing. Theirs is a search for affection and validation from others while they express their disappointment and frustration by throwing verbal barbs at each other. The work is as visceral and vibrant as when it was first produced and the characters are thoroughly engaging. Jodie Prenger is amazing as Helen the overblown, overconfident yet vulnerable mother. She gets it just right as she alternately infuriates with her selfishness and insensitivity and then confuses us with flashes of caring and fragility. Gemma Dobson is equally strong as her mother's mirror image, stubborn and headstrong yet needy and confused. The play itself still bears some of the hallmarks of a first work, occasionally rather forced plotting and an unevenness in the language with speeches too articulate and references too arcane for the characters involved. The placement of musicians on the stage is also sometimes distracting. Nevertheless, caveats aside, this remains a fine production of a modern classic.

 Reviewed by J.C.

  Our Score:  ☆☆☆☆ 

 Want to save on tickets? See our Tips page.

 WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:
Until February 29, 2020
Mon - Sat: 7:30 pm, Thu & Sat: 2:30 pm
Trafalgar Studios (Studio 1)
Nearest station: Charing Cross
https://trafalgar-studios.com/shows/a-taste-of-honey/
Map & Location: 14 Whitehall, Charing Cross, London SW1A 2DY, UK

Most Popular

Stories – The Tap Dance Sensation ★★★★★ Sadler's Wells Peacock Theatre | Oct 23 - Nov 2, 2024

Image
Tap dancing is a form usually associated with those wonderful old Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and '40s, but the RB company brings this dance art into the 21st Century with an extraordinary production that also incorporates jazz dance and rap. Stories is a very meta narrative that recounts the experience of Icarus, a young actor who is playing a newspaper worker in a film. While the myth of Icarus is usually seen as a commentary on the hubris of a youth who misuses the invention of his father, in this version things are flipped so that the enthusiastic younger man is trapped in a power relationship with the Daedalus-like figure of his director. That dynamic is also mirrored in the story of the film which is being made – a naïve young worker is first abused by his boss and then lured into a struggle with a gambling gang lord. Stories explores these overlapping tales of manipulation and creativity in a manner that is wonderfully original and totally enthralling. The dance sequ...
Full Details »

CADEL: Lungs on Legs ★★★★ Riverside Studios | Oct 13 - Nov 15, 2026

Image
This is the true story of an Australian cyclist who dreamt of winning the Tour de France. In a sport plagued by drugs and cheating, he strove to run an honest race and to triumph for his country. Connor Delves, who wrote and stars in this biography, creates a portrait of grit and determination that will resonate with fans of the sports underdog genre. Think Rocky Balboa on a bicycle. It is an inspiring tale of perseverance and resilience, and Delves puts in a fine performance, most of which is on various bicycles. While we are given some of Cadel Evans’ difficult background, as his parents moved from place to place and later divorced, there is little attempt to draw an in-depth psychological portrait of the athlete. His relationship with Aldo Sassi, his coach who died before Evans achieved his goal, is also only sketched in. Nor is there much exploration of the complexities of competing at this level, the commodification of athletes or their relationships with sponsors. CADEL: Lungs on...
Full Details »

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins ★★★ The Other Palace | Oct 22, 2026 - Jan 3, 2027

Image
Garry Starr is the comic alter ego of Australian actor, writer and performer Damien Warren-Smith. Before Garry Starr: Classic Penguins , there was Garry Starr Performs Everything , a comic look at different theatrical genres, and Garry Starr: Greece Lightning , a humorous take on mythology. The latest one-hour addition to the Starr oeuvre takes as its starting point Penguin Books paperbacks, which aimed to make literature affordable and accessible to everyone. However, the show draws only on the book titles themselves, from Moby Dick to Great Expectations , as the basis for its clowning and physical comedy, much of which revolves around Starr remaining naked throughout. The literary parody is relatively thin, with the silliness and shock value taking precedence. Audience participation is extensive, with members of the audience brought up on stage and a nude Starr body-surfing through the crowd. Ultimately, humour is highly subjective, and this broad approach may not appeal to everyone...
Full Details »

Girls ★★★★ Young Vic | Oct 22 - Nov 21, 2026

Image
In 2014, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State, north-eastern Nigeria. The horrific event received considerable press coverage in the West, but Theresa Ikoko’s first professionally produced play brings it to the fore with an intensity and emotional force usually absent from the nightly news as it chronicles the world’s disasters. By introducing us to Tisana, Ruhab and Haleema, she transforms an abstract act of infamy into something personal and profound. From the moment the three appear on stage in a choreographed sequence, Hannah Akhalu, Sewa Zamba and Tara Tijani establish their characters as distinct individuals. Akhalu’s Tisana is shy and tentative, an obedient child who displays extraordinary fortitude in the trials that follow. Zamba’s Ruhab is a mischievous romantic whose aspirations extend little further than finding a boyfriend, while Tijani’s Haleema is a fiercely independent sceptic who punctures both religious and romantic ...
Full Details »

Franz & Marie ★★ Charing Cross Theatre | Sep 28 - Nov 14, 2026

Image
Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck , written in 1836-37 and published posthumously in 1879, is acknowledged to be a series of fragments rather than a fully developed work. The challenge for any adaptor is to transform this political parable into a coherent and moving drama with psychologically complex characters. Woyzeck is the embodiment of the proletariat, exploited by those above him and subjected to a cruel scientific experiment. Given today’s political climate, with the power of oligarchs no longer concealed and the increasingly unsettling presence of AI, there would seem to be plenty here for an adaptor to explore. Unfortunately, this production fails to rise to the occasion. The characters remain largely one-dimensional and the story veers towards melodrama rather than tragedy. The decision to introduce Gaelic music and to create an almost céilí-like atmosphere is particularly unsuccessful. Some of the ballads are suitably plaintive, but their melancholy never deepens our understanding of ...
Full Details »

Iphigénie en Tauride ★★★★ London Coliseum | November 6 - 14, 2026

Image
Generally regarded as Gluck's greatest achievement in French opera, Iphigénie en Tauride premiered in Paris in 1779 and was an immediate success. Today, however, it is rarely performed, and the reasons for its neglect are probably manifold. They range from a contemporary preference for the thrillingly passionate arias of the 19th-century operatic tradition to a widespread lack of familiarity with the myths on which the work is based. Its narrative also eschews the familiar theme of romantic love in favour of an exploration of family loyalty and the complex Greek concept of fate. Gluck's opera draws on the Greek playwright Euripides' treatment of the myth of the cursed house of Atreus. In this version of the story, Iphigénie, who was to have been sacrificed to the gods by her father, Agamemnon, is rescued by Diane and transported to Tauris. There, as a priestess in the temple, she is expected to sacrifice strangers captured by the island's inhabitants. Christine Rice is...
Full Details »

Speculations ★★ Marylebone Theatre | Oct 30, 2026 - Jan 17, 2027

Image
Dorothy Kilgallen is probably not a familiar name to British audiences. She was a prominent American journalist, crime reporter, Broadway columnist and television personality who became a celebrity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Speculations examines her investigations into the death of Marilyn Monroe and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The story is largely a recounting of Kilgallen's conspiracy theories surrounding these two events. Playwright Torben Betts creates the character of Flo, Kilgallen's new nanny, as a pretext for the journalist to narrate her theories. He then inserts scenes between Carlos Marcello, the mob boss, and Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of Kennedy, and between Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe to illustrate these ideas. Lee Newby's set is clever and versatile, switching between the three locations, but the production is less convincing when it comes to period detail. The mob boss, for example, has long hair styl...
Full Details »

Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists ★★★★★ National Theatre | September 19 - 26, 2026

Image
In Leipzig in 1930, Bertolt Brecht’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was disrupted by Nazi supporters protesting against what they regarded as politically and morally offensive material. Unsurprisingly, Brecht is frequently referenced in Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists and, like Brecht’s work, Tiago Rodrigues’ drama proves to be both intelligent and incendiary. The play’s central premise is that a Portuguese family has created a rite of passage in memory of a woman who was murdered by Fascists. On turning 26, members of the family are expected to kill a selected fascist. The family members all take the name Catarina in memory of the murdered woman, and now it is the turn of one of the great-granddaughters of the family matriarch to carry out the ritual killing. When she hesitates to follow the family tradition, what ensues is a multi-layered exploration of resistance to authoritarianism and the morality of killing in the name of political resistance. The dense ...
Full Details »

Triumph ★★★ Almeida Theatre | October 16 - 23, 2026

Image
Written in the early second century AD, Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars chronicles the lives of Julius Caesar, who never held the title of emperor, and the first eleven emperors of Rome. Their personalities, private lives, ambitions and scandals are all on display, and although scholars may debate the accuracy of some of the accounts, they certainly make for interesting reading. In her 15-minute play Triumph , Caryl Churchill draws on many of Suetonius’ more outrageous stories about the emperors’ conduct, putting them in the mouth of a blonde press secretary who delivers her pronouncements in the now familiar style of the White House. The audience is left to draw the parallels with the behaviour of the current occupant of that landmark and his imperial pretensions. It is a clever and amusing device, but the play amounts to little more than a short skit of the kind more commonly associated with the Fringe. The principal attraction is Churchill’s name and the strength of her previous work...
Full Details »

Golden Boy ★★★★ Almeida Theatre | Sep 8 - Oct 31, 2026

Image
Written in 1937, Golden Boy is probably Clifford Odets’ most famous work. The story of a young man torn between becoming a violinist or a boxer is a critique of the corrupting influence of the materialism that underpins the American Dream. The theme echoes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , right down to the famous scene in which Gatsby contemplates his beautiful shirts. Young Joe Bonaparte is similarly seduced by a world that values appearances over substance when the gangster Eddie Fuseli showers him with silk shirts and other trappings of success. In forsaking his calling as a musician for the fame and money of boxing, Joe ultimately sacrifices not only his family ties but also his sense of self. The performances are uniformly strong. Josh O’Connor gives Joe an intense, increasingly volatile presence, convincingly charting his transformation from a gifted young musician into a man consumed by ambition and violence. Hayley Squires is equally compelling as the hard-nosed Lorna ...
Full Details »

The City Life Magazine | Reviews & Ratings