A Taste of Honey review

The first half zips along with a breezy, devil-may-care confidence, before the story takes a darker turn in Act II, when schoolgirl Jo falls pregnant and the true damage of being brought up by a woman so ill-equipped for motherhood is revealed. As Jo, Rowan Robinson brims with confidence when flirting vampily with her mother’s latest squeeze Peter (a boorish and slippery Andrew Sheridan), but then looks like a scared, vulnerable little girl at the thought of being left alone. She comes into her own in the second half, as Jo’s determination not to be like her mother and her unwillingness to conform see her entering into a platonic relationship with her prim, kindly gay friend Geoffrey, played with sensitivity and a tragic wounded pride by David Moorst.

Robinson spars brilliantly with Jill Halfpenny as Jo’s flighty, self-absorbed, controlling mother Helen, with the pair delivering Delaney’s dryly funny, lyrical dialogue with palpable relish. Halfpenny inhabits the character of Helen totally, channelling another fictional Salford siren (one, like Delaney, also celebrated by Morrissey and The Smiths): Coronation Street’s iconic femme fatale Elsie Tanner, her distinctive Tyne and Wear tones successfully concealed beneath a convincing Mancunian accent.

Details that once would have been shocking now seem commonplace, although the characters’ casually intolerant attitudes to race and homosexuality feel even more disturbing. Designer Peter Butler’s imaginative but unobtrusive, period-perfect set and shabbily stylish costumes complete the effect of a production that breathes fresh life into a play that, six decades on, still has the power to connect.