NY1’s Roma Torre reviews "A Taste of Honey," currently playing off-Broadway courtesy of The Pearl Theatre Company.
"A Taste Of Honey" made quite a splash 58 years ago when 18-year-old Shelagh Delaney opened her play in London. A film version, and Broadway production starring Angela Lansbury, Joan Plowright and Billy Dee Williams, followed. The kitchen sink drama is dated now and if it's lost much of its punch, the Pearl Theatre's admirable revival still manages to find resonance in its working-class themes.
It was quite a shocker when it debuted. The achingly honest story of Jo, a teenager, and Helen, her neglectful mother, living on the fringe in Northern England.
Helen takes off with a younger man and abandons Jo, who's forced to fend for herself. She falls in love with a black sailor and ends up pregnant and alone.
A glimmer of hope comes in the form of a young gay man who befriends Jo and offers to take care of her, but none of the characters can escape the rabbit hole of dysfunction in which they've fallen. Still, Delaney tempers their dreary existence with welcome bits of humor.
It takes a seasoned director to plumb the emotional layers in this complex work, and Austin Pendleton is just the man. His staging is naturalistic and a bit surreal, incorporating a roving jazz trio to comment on the action with musical grace notes.
He also delivers with a strong ensemble nicely shading Delaney's grey landscape with dark and light hues. Rachel Botchan and Rebekah Brockman evoke the inevitable symbiosis that keeps mothers and daughters forever together and apart.
"A Taste Of Honey" may be past its prime, but its groundbreaking depiction of thorny cultural issues launched a genre, setting the stage for what's come to be known as the tragiccomedy of today.