Theatre Workshop

What aspects of A Taste of Honey make it quite clearly a play that originated from Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop?

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[Sarah Burbridge]

Produced by Theatre Workshop two years after ‘Look Back in Anger’ arrived on the British stage, ‘A Taste of Honey’ displays many of the hallmarks associated with the company led by Joan Littlewood.

As a left wing group, Theatre Workshop obviously promoted plays that centred on working class people and the plights they faced from day to day. In opposition to previous ideals that plays should follow ‘socially acceptable’ narratives, their manifesto was to “face up to the problems of the time; it [theatre] cannot ignore the poverty and human suffering which increases every day.”

‘A Taste of Honey’ certainly fulfils this, tackling many taboo issues for the 1950s: race- it is a black sailor who gets Jo pregnant, sex- Jo is pregnant despite being unmarried, and there is the suggestion of Geof’s homosexuality, and class- Helen and Jo are a lower working class family, and Helen is highly driven to marry a richer man in order to ‘better’ herself.

Possibly the most significant aspect of ‘A Taste of Honey’ is how these situations are presented. Despite the fact that she is unmarried, going to give birth to a mixed-race baby and living with a homosexual man, Jo seems quite content with her set-up. When Helen arrives to take her away, Jo forcefully defends her working class lifestyle in the face of her mother’s middle class aspirations:

“We’re wonderful! Do you know, for the first time in my life I feel really important. I feel as though I could take care of the whole world. I even feel as though I could take care of you, too!” (p.81)

It could be argued that Helen’s final action- to resort to a drink because she cannot deal with her daughter’s revelations, demonstrates the weakness in those who deny the reality of 1950s working class life. This would be highly demonstrative of both Delaney and Littlewood’s ideologies- that a play’s foremost aim is to have “a powerful social dynamic”.

[Louise Harrison]

There a many aspects of A Taste of Honey that point to it being a Theatre Workshop production, firstly and most obviously the play addresses many taboos of the day, this is most obviously seen in the fact that two of the main characters, Jo and Geoff are, respectively, a young unmarried mother who has got pregnant by a black sailor and a young gay man who has been kicked out of his lodgings for bringing home men. These topics are addressed very gently and the play leaves audiences surprised by and sympathetic to the very unusual relationship between Jo and Geoff. In the film version of A Taste of Honey, the relationship between Jo and her sailor are addressed even more controversially for an audience at the time. Their relationship is portrayed much more tenderly than it is written in the actual script, and in both the play and the film when asked if Jo minds that he is black she replies “you know I like it”.
The one aspect of the play that I think makes it most obviously a Theatre Workshop play is its northern humour. Whereas in Look Back in Anger the accents were what shocked audiences, in A Taste of Honey the very northern sense of humour as well as the very obviously working class dilemmas would have had a similar effect, an effect that the Theatre Workshop actively tried to achieve. John Sheppard in his interview recalls; “Delaney captured the northern humour within the very sad context of this girl who is so lonely and this slatternly mother who is only interested in the next boyfriend and she can’t keep her boyfriend for very long either and this louche boyfriend that Robert Stephens played with the funny eye and it’s intensely sad.”
The intense sadness of the play and the way that the play ends and begins in the same way with situations repeating themselves, is another aspect that is indicative that this is a Theatre Workshop production.
The character of Helen shows us someone who is desperately trying to rise above the hand she has been dealt and never really succeeds, whilst it is Jo who, albeit because she has very few other options, seems to embrace her working class background and comes close to really making a life for herself, something that Helen’s return frustrates. All these things are indicators that this is a Theatre Workshop production.

[Blanche Hammond]

'A Taste of Honey' can be recognised as a play from Theatre Workshop mainly because the company's aim was to produce left-wing theatre 'by and about the working class'. This play addresses the trials and tribulations that may be part of the everday life of a lower working class person during the 1950s, and it also does this unashamedly. For example, it examines the hardship of life for the poorer classes.

When Jo is living by herself in the flat she has to work in a shoe shop during the day and a bar at night in order to pay the rent. She has to deal with the consequences of a short lived romance with a black sailor when she falls pregnant, and the reader wonders how she will manage to scrape by.

Jo, however, seems to be content with her position, as if she is resigned that life will never be easy but she knows she has to make the best of what she has. For example, when Geoffrey suggests she go to her mother for money, she replies, 'I'm not planning big plans for this baby or dreaming big dreams. You know what happens when you do things like that. The baby'll be born dead or daft'.

The play raises many issues of taboo, especially through Jo's situation. She has fallen pregnant to a black man, a great stigma in society of the 1950s, and is having the baby out of wedlock. Furthermore, she is living with another man who is hinted to be homosexual. Her whole situation is bizarre and goes against society's norms, something which her mother constantly reminds her of, even though Jo seems to be happy the way she is, as she says to Helen, 'for the first time in my life I feel really important'.

The way in which 'A Taste of Honey' brings up these controversial issues does not criticise them or tell the audience how they should live, but merely puts them out there, refusing to let the audience ignore them, which is an important part of the Theatre Workshop.

Another aspect of the play that makes it recognisable as a play of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop is the emphasis on dance and movement. The Theatre Workshop experimented with the physical side of characterisation, being heavily influenced by the work of Rudolf Laban. He explored movement as behaviour, a basis for the use of dance in therapy and also for the training of actors and dancers in expressive movement.

This idea can be seen in the inclusion of dance in 'A Taste of Honey'. Foe example, when Helen goes off with Peter leaving Jo behind, the 'black boy', Jimmy, enters and 'they move towards each other as if dancing to the music. The music goes, the lights change'. This element in the play may symbollise the dream- world that they are both swept away with, being young lovers, until the reality kicks in and there are consequences- Jimmy leaving Jo and her pregnancy. It could also be ironic, similiar to the stereotypical scene in a fairy story when the prince rescues the princess.

[Vicki Carey]

The Theatre Workshop company dared to show plays which the Lord chamberlain would have undoubtedly censored beyond recognition.
'A Taste Of Honey' features many of the subjects which would have been immediatley censored - the two prodominent ones being the inter racial relationship between Jo and her sailor, and the hints of Geoff being homosexual.
Joan Littlewood once famously said, 'Theatre should be free, like air or water or love' and i think that even when just reading the play you get a real sense that it is very truthful, and doesn't gloss over the less appealing realities of life.
This is another factor which makes it quite clear that 'A Taste Of Honey' is a Theatre Workshop production. If you look at Rattigan's 'Seperate Tables' the difference between the types of characters each playwright uses is quite obvious. Rattigan's upper class Mrs Reighton-Bell is a million miles away from Helen and Jo and their lower class existence. The theatre workshop typically put on plays which portrayed those on the margins of society and didn't attempt to give a solution or happy ending. Helen and Jo are typical of this, they are no more happy at the end of the play than they are at the beggining - if anything their circumstances have changed for the worse, Helen has been ditched by her Husband for a younger woman and Jo faces Childbirth alone and a life of being a single parent. The birth of a baby is usually a symbol of hope but this is a child whose own Grandmother cannot accept its parentage - an opinion undoubtedly that would have been echoed throughout society.
Delaney wanted to present reality without any alterations or cuts and Theatre workshop has clearly been instramental in helping her to achieve this.

[Sophie Barnard]

Theatre Workshop has become indicative with the concept of an egalitarian theatre which rejected the hierarchy of the West End and maintained an ethos of social awareness in their productions. It became evident in the early 1950’s the cautious nature of theatre was mirroring the restrictions within British society. After the visit to Britain of the Berliner Ensemble, support from the influential critic Kenneth Tynan, and a general thirst for a practitioners theatre, the Theatre Workshop and its Kitchen Sink drama rose in it standing.

Rather than mimicking the ‘Angry Young Man’ genre that John Osborne had made popular in the late fifties, Delaney’s characters were depicted as largely unmotivated and, rather than rebelling against the corrupt social order, they accepted it. Although this cyclical approach (for example Helen beginning the play ‘pass me that bottle’ and ending ‘I’ll have to have a drink’) is not an overt protest like that of Osborne, the issues of severe socio-economic conditions, miscegenation and alienation are all present. This un-sensationalist depiction of the working class is typical of the Theatre Workshop.

The influence of Brecht is evident within Theatre Workshop productions. The tendency to put responsibility on the audience to reflect upon events within the play is unmistakable in the rhetorical questioning; ‘(to the audience) I ask you, what would you do?’, and also the revolutionary staging; ‘stage represents a comfortless flat’, ‘Geoffrey dances in with a mop…in reality months have passed’.

The honest and realistic voice of the characters is also common within Theatre Workshop. Jo, the lost soul, and Helen, the working class prostitute, banter within the play about trivialities such as how to work the gas stove. Occasionally, moments of social commentary interrupt the text in a way which does not detract from the Kitchen Sink drama, rather enriches it for those who recognise the critical allusion. Helen, for example, comments on the state of British culture; ‘cinema has become more like the theatre…can’t hear what they’re saying half the time and when you do it’s not worth listening to’. It is this acknowledgement of social issues that is integral to Theatre Workshop productions.

[Ellie Purkis]

Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop believed that 'The theatre must face up to the problems of the time; it cannot ignore the poverty and human suffering which increases every day.' Shelagh Delaney's 'A Taste of Honey' fitted this bill perfectly; portraying the lives of a 'semi-whore' mother her pimp boyfriend, and neglected, uneducated daughter. Delaney shatters two ultimate taboos; black-white coitus (with the result of Jo becoming pregnant with a black sailor's baby)and homosexuality, through Jo's gay friend.

However with street theatre no longer the workshop's focus, and the audience no longer mainly working class, Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop no longer sought to get on the level of the audience through this portrayal, so much as to bring to challenge them in bringing to light the harsh reality of a lifestyle which they would previously have barely known existed.

Joan Littlewood specificly challenges her audience by use of asides; directly addressing and questionning the audience and demanding their engagement with the struggles of the working class.

The theatre workshop expected the writers of the plays they took on to be flexible regarding changes to the script and staging, which often resulted in disputes over authorship. 'A Taste of Honey' is one such play, and, whilst written by Shelagh Delaney, nevertheless bears much resonance to the street theatre of the then known 'The Red Megaphones'. For example the jumps between scenes; ften years at a time, speed the play up, whilst the simplicity of the presentation harks back to the necessary simplicity of the street theatre set.

[Matthew Comras]

A Taste of Honey

Shelagh Delaney’s first contribution to the literary world brought with it a new issue that seemed inevitable after the rise of the angry young man. The play focuses on Jo and Helen, a mother and daughter who are a far cry from the plod of Alison and her iron. These women seem to break every mould and stereotype through their status as single mother and daughter, Helen’s pronounced promiscuity, their seeming lack of a genuine filial bond and attitude to marriage and divorce. Delaney was clearly keen to bring women into the same limelight that Jimmy Porter enjoyed by portraying women as empowered, although troubled, members of society capable of independently making a life for themselves.

Delaney also chooses to touch on the subject of racism introducing a black sailor, although it is less racism that she portrays and more racial acceptance. She pairs the oppression of women with racial oppression and by displaying acceptance of the black sailor she is simultaneously promoting the elevation of the status of women.

[Alison Norden]

Joan Littlewood was able to retain the sense of a ‘young girl’s play’ whilst adapting the original script. Predominantly it was the themes of the play which allowed Joan Littlewood to passionately engage in a production of the play since like Delaney, she saw theatre as a place of entertainment where the audience is in contact with ‘real’ people. Joan Littlewood believed in moving away from traditional theatre with a nuclear, upper class family, and therefore Littlewood can establish a strong sense of the issues in the play such as race, homosexuality, and roles in life such as motherhood, on the stage. Themes such as Jo’s fears of the unknown and darkness with a desire of freedom, Helen’s desires of a middle class status by seeking men of wealth, and rejection of adult values typify this desire to depict the real life. The title of the play itself, ‘A Taste of Honey’, implies that at some point each character has a taste of happiness, and it would appear that Littlewood managed to demonstrate this through elaborated comical moments. Examples of where comedy may have been enhanced would have been at the beginning where Helen directly talks at the audience about Jo’s behaviour, and where childish fantasies are exchanged between Jo and her two friends. An example of a line which could be spoken to the audience is ‘Wouldn’t she get on your nerves? Just when I was going to take the weight off my feet for five minutes’. Littlewood also had the characters dance on and off to signature tunes, emphasising the emphasising comedy in the play where conflict arises between characters. Overall, this added a more buoyant element to the play.
Theatre Workshop settled in East London in 1953 and in rehearsals actors were required to discuss, train in movement and singing, and research the plays. Plays underwent many transformations compared with the original script, as actors were encouraged to improvise so Littlewood could convey a sense of reality. Gaps of time written into the play are expressed by sounds techniques, changing tempo and movement. It was noted that the first production was not very different from the original script however, Littlewood did want to highlight the fact that this was ‘a young girl’s play’. To help achieve this Peter’s character was adapted to assume the role of a young girl’s ‘dream man’ and gave him an air of compassion towards young children. Littlewood altered the ending and deliberately enhanced Geoff’s homosexual tendencies to draw attention to subjects that were shunned in 1950s society. John Russell Taylor in ‘Anger and After’ says the first production was in ‘Joan Littlewood’s characteristic manner, a sort of magnified realism in which everything is like life but somehow larger than life’.

[Francesca Soper]

Much of the credit for the success of 'A Taste Of Honey' is attributed to Joan Littlewood, whose experimental Theatre Workshop first received and produced the play. Theatre Workshop made people understand that theatre could geniunely have something to offer, it had something to say about human experience, it could send the audience a message, and yet still be entertaining.

'A Taste Of Honey', of which the content was far too provocative in the early 1960s to be touched by an established company, dealt with with social issues, the main character a school girl with an alcoholic mother and becoming pregnant with a black sailor, and focuses a lot with the life of the working class. The play opened to mixed reviews, however the characters were praised for their honest, realistic voices, hands-on style and singled out for its accurate depictions of working class lives. This reflects when Theatre Workshop decided to look for theatre and found one in the East-end in London, lived there illegally and had a hands-on approach about clearing the building and starting a fresh start.

However I think although Theatre Workshop helped Delaney's play, Delaney's play also helped Theatre Workshop to become an established company, as it broke new ground in its sympathetic portrayal of a young working-class heroine, a gay man and an interracial romance. However, no one really exactly knows how much of the final script was Delaney's and what Joan developed through improvisation.

[Cerian Jones]

I think the overriding reason that A Taste of Honey originates from Theatre Workshop is that it deals with raw emotions and realities that were often overlooked or veiled in other scripts. Delaney manages to bring controversial topics such as teenage pregnancy, homosexuality and race issues to the forefront of the play whilst approaching it in a realistic manner that does not appear to be intentionally controversial. Another reason that A Taste of Honey clearly appears as a Theatre Workshop production is that the main character, Jo, is not just female but also a dominant character which the play focuses on. It was uncommon for a female to play such a strong role with the male characters clearly less significant. The focus on Jo and her decisions makes A of Honey very different to other plays, and so a clear choice for Theatre Workshop.

[Agnieszka Sikora]

Joan Littlewood and her almost ‘single-handed’ Theatre Workshop was a company of young artists who shaped its future philosophy -to entertain and expose the reality of the working-class universe.
The eighteen year-old Shelagh Delaney was one of those controversial playwrights whose script would probably not have been solicited by any other established company at that time.

As Jackie Fletcher wrote in her « A Tribute to Joan Littlewood » :
"She broke the rules of the game and got things done. Joan believed in a theatre for the people, and not the wishy-washy 19th century liberal humanist tradition, in which the working classes are conjoined to appreciate art for their own amelioration, something Joan found patronising, a denial of genuine working class values, and an obfuscation of the system of oppression."

These words would best describe the eighteen year-old Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey”. The main characters, Jo and her mother Helen are an accurate example of a poor, shattered working-class family struggling to survive.
The play mirrors Littlewood’s ideas of what theatre should be about- it reflects a world in which social taboos are broken. “A Taste of Honey” is indeed abounded by shocking details of Jo and Helen’s life. The young girl is pregnant with a black sailor whereas her-prostitue-mother is about to marry a far younger man. Jo is unschooled and expresses her hostility towards education several times in the play. On top of it, she lives in some sort of commune with her homosexual friend Goef.

Jo: “No, we share everything, see! We’re communists too.”
Helen: “That’s his influence I suppose.”

The above passage underlines the left-wing orientation of the Theatre Workshop and its will to expose the mechanism of working-class.
Revolutionary language and style was Littlewood’s other innovation (or rather development, for some of her practices had already been introduced by Brecht and his Berliner Ensemble, e.g. Helen’s direct address to the audience “I ask you, what would you do?”).

“A Taste of Honey” is a mixture of wit (Helen: “…the only consolation I can find in your immediate presence is your ultimate absence”), naturalistic, ‘raw’ humour (Jo: “What’s the bed like?” Helen: “Like a coffin only not half as comfortable”), paradoxal language (Jo: “Buying my silence, hey! It’s a good idea.”) and absurdity (Jo: “You never think” Helen: “I know”).

Shelagh Delaney accurately matches the unintelligent, down-to-earth street language with social issues and ‘traps’ in which her characters are involved. This factor also indicates that “A Taste of Honey” is Littlewood’s company production. For as she described the role of theatre: it “must face up to problems of the time…”

[Marc Le Déroff]

Littlewood and McColl started the Theatre Workshop with Howard Goorney and Gerry Raffles, they devised and commissioned plays by and about the working class in the UK and were commited to a left wing ideology. They built a reputation for cutting edge theatre across Europe. Desperate for a permanent base, they leased the Theatre Royal in Stratford, east London, in the early 1950s.

Joan Littlewood was communist, she was an interesting and influential director and had many successes, because she saw theatre as a way of expanding the cultural and political awareness of working class people. She challenged the dominance of the commercial theatre from the mid-1950s through to the mid-1960s.

The Theatre Workshop used popular musical in most of their performances,Jimmy Miller better known as Ewan MacColl, developped a talent for writing songs and political squibs. He became an expert at adapting and interpreting ballads so that they reached the hearts and minds of ordinary people.
This is one aspect of A Taste Of Honey that make it a play that originated from the Theatre Workshop, because a Jazz Trio played during the performance. It is in my opinion quite meaningful, as a symbol reminding of the Afro-American people, and it prepares indirectly the audience for understanding the race issue the play tries to point out.
Joan Littlewood inspired a whole generation of radical theatre. Her work had a massive impact on theatre, and continues to do so.

[stephen wischhusen]

Vicki Carey states that the Theatre Workshop company dared to show plays which the Lord Chamberlain would have undoubtedly censored beyond recognition.
All very well, but surely Theatre Workshop is remarkable because it did operate during the Lord Chamberlain's regime and its plays were censored (as every play publicly performed at that time had to be) Theatre Workshop was no Club Theatre outside the Law, its home, Theatre Royal Stratford East was a licensed public theatre and as such all plays presented there were read and licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. That surely is why Geoff in "Taste of Honey" is only suggested as being homosexual. And don't forget, plays like Taste of Honey, musicals like Sparrers Can't Sing (another Theatre Workshop production, this one written by Stephen Lewis who came to more unlikely fame in tv's "On the Buses") also transferred to the West End under the auspices of Donald Albery and would have been well under the eye of the Lord Chamberlain there.
You may like to note that the censorship of plays by the Lord Chamberlain did not finish until the 1960's, therefore all plays publicly performed before then had to have his licence.
A play being licenced by the Lord Chamberlain rendered it safe to perform. Many managers felt exposed once this licencing was abolished because its absence rendered the managers the artists
the writer and the producers liable to prosecution by anyone
with a mischeivous mind. Viz; The Romans in Britain and the prosecution brought by Mary Whitehouse. Such a prosecution would have been impossible if the play had been ;licensed by the Lord Chamberlain.
This has become a little off subject, but writers should check their dates ! Theatre Workshop was not exempt from the Lord Chamberlain's censorship.

[Emma Nolan]

I think what makes A Taste of Honey so distinctively a product of Theatre Workshop is its evident originality and clear break from conventional theatre. In a period of significant change for British theatre, Joan Littlewood diversified the already expanding genres further, through her and her company’s emphasis and development upon the playwright’s original text. This was in contrast to the productions of the Royal Court, who were very much about the playwright and the text as a fixed thing. Littlewood and Theatre Workshop believed that theatre was more about spontaneity and development. For example, when Shelagh Delaney submitted A Taste of Honey to the Workshop, it is argued that the company did not take it as it was, and instead collectively developed and enhanced the piece into the acclaimed play that it is now. Additionally, Littlewood instilled ‘method acting’ into her company – forcing her actors to immerse themselves into their characters, become the characters even. Additionally, there is evidence of a Brechtian influence, with the use of the orchestration – the jazz band, and the mise en scene – British theatre was not only changing thematically, but it was also looking different.
Their performances, however, were never fixed pieces, which is unfortunate in the sense that there are no real records for the company.

Another thing that makes A Taste of Honey distinctively a Theatre Workshop piece is the strong working class undertones. The Workshop was based in Stratford East, a somewhat deprived, working class area of London which was a sharp contrast to the world of the West End. There was a gap in the market, and in a sense, they were responsible to liaise with their local public – giving their ‘working class’ production a certain degree of authenticity. The characters would be reflective of the audiences. Perhaps due to their environment and predominant audience, they were able to take a more ‘gritty’ and challenging look at working class attitudes and issues than others such as Osborne. For example, the inclusion of themes of homosexuality, inter racial relationships, promiscuity, dreams and aspirations etc. as well as the general dissatisfaction and disappointment of the post war youth.

[stephen wischhusen]

The September 9th onference made it quite clear the contrary to some of the opinions above, Joan Littlewood may well have been a ghuiding light, but she did not acheive the remarkable successes single handed. The company was ateam. In its early days much of the political drive came from Ewan McColl. But every-one had a part to play. It was a unique ensemble and some members quit when the big times came as they felt they had been sold down the river of commercialism

[roma byer]

this is a message for Cerian jones.I saw that you had interviewed Colette King and I was taught by her at Central more than 40 years ago. She was utterly inspirational and I have remembered her fondly all these years. I wanted to tell her that and I wondered if Cerian might be kind enough to contact me and pass on my details to Colette. Thank you very much