A Taste of Honey at the Royal Exchange Theatre

A Taste of Honey, Shelagh Delaney’s career-defining play, is the next production in the Royal Exchange Theatre’s incredible 2024 Spring/ Summer Season. Written in 1958, its groundbreaking themes exploring family dynamics, gender, race and class, made it a defining work of the 1950s and pioneered the ‘kitchen sink’ realism movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. Now, over 65 years later, the play still stands defiant and fresh, and its resonance and cultural impact is startling.

Set just down the road in Salford, a stone’s throw away from the Royal Exchange Theatre, A Taste of Honey offers a sharply observed portrait of working-class life in Northwest England in the late 1950s. Perhaps, most crucially, this gritty and honest play was considered a daring piece of theatre around the time it was written for placing a working-class female perspective front and centre.

First performed in 1958, when Delaney was just 19 years old, the play was developed and produced by the visionary theatre-maker Joan Littlewood and her radical Theatre Workshop. It premiered at Theatre Royal Stratford East before transferring to the West End a year later, and was adapted into an award-winning film in 1961.

Down-to-earth and moving, A Taste of Honey explores the complex dynamic of a mother and daughter relationship. In a home of constant arguing and bickering, the play follows the story of 17-year-old Jo and her restless mother, who keeps moving them from one Salford flat to another. Jo knows the pattern – another man will appear and lure her mum away – and she will be left to fend for herself. However, the story takes a different turn when Jimmie offers to stay with Jo for Christmas. Swept up in his charm and the idea of freedom, Jo has to mature as a young woman while navigating her own burgeoning romance – no matter how difficult that might be.

We‘re thrilled that director Emma Baggott makes her Royal Exchange Debut with Jill Halfpenny (recently seen in hit ITV drama The Long Shadow) taking the role of Helen alongside Rowan Robinson (Passenger, ITVX) as daughter, Jo. The cast is completed by David Moorst as Geoffrey, Obadiah as Jimmie and Andrew Sheridan as Peter. Delaney’s exceptional dialogue will be punctuated by a stunningly sweet jazz score performed by Nishla Smith.

Director Emma Baggott told us, “I am delighted to be directing the Royal Exchange Theatre’s forthcoming production of A Taste of Honey. It was one of the first texts I studied as a teenager and has long lived in my head and heart. I have always been inspired by Delaney’s radical and courageous decision to centre working-class women at the centre of her drama and not as subordinate to the interests of male characters.”

The Royal Exchange Theatre thrives on bringing revolutionary British classics to contemporary audiences. We think they’ve hit a sweet spot bringing Delaney’s extraordinary work to their in-the-round stage this spring.