There’s life yet in the kitchen-sink drama

A Taste of Honey Royal Exchange, Manchester ★★★★★

Set in Salford, Shelagh Delaney’s celebrated drama A Taste of Honey was first staged by Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in 1958. The play portrayed an unmarried 17-year-old white woman getting pregnant by her 20-year-old black boyfriend. Moreover, it featured a positive representation of a gay man some nine years before homosexuality was decriminalised. If that was controversial, the cinematic release of Tony Richardson’s 1961 film sent shockwaves through British society.

All of which begs the question: why stage it now? Emma Baggott (who directs this new production) seems to offer two convincing answers to this question.

Firstly, for all the social progress we have made since 1958, the play’s themes still carry an undeniable currency. Secondly, A Taste of Honey is brilliantly written and beautifully structured.

An intimate theatre-in-the-round, the Royal Exchange presents a number of problems for both theatre artists and audiences. The most serious is that, whichever way they turn, an actor always has their back to a significant proportion of the audience. Designer Peter Butler attempts to solve this with a circular brick road, but there’s only so much cyclical perambulation that one can shoehorn into a drama.

Still, it’s remarkable just how much of the passion and pathos of Delaney’s play is actually conveyed by Baggott’s staging. This is down in large part to a universally excellent cast, led by the superb Rowan Robinson, who has shades of a young Jane Horrocks in her portrayal of Jo, the drama’s vulnerable-yet-steely teenager.

The scene in which she finds herself alone with Peter (the nasty spiv who is set to marry Jo’s neglectful mother, Helen) is remarkably potent. Jill Halfpenny’s Helen is suitably monstrous, but with an underlying and brittle fragility. Singer Nishla Smith functions as a kind of unobtrusive guardian angel throughout. It’s a neat touch that reminds us of the dream-like aspect to a play that is so often considered to be the quintessence of British kitchen-sink realism.

Until April 13. Tickets: 0161 833 9833; royalexchange.co.uk

Mummy issues: Rowan Robinson and Jill Halfpenny as Jo and Helen