A Taste Of Honey at 60

A celebration of the groundbreaking play by Shelagh Delaney, an immediate sensation in 1958 for its unflinching portrayals of class, race and sex. With original cast members Murray Melvin and Joan Plowright, Shelagh’s daughter Charlotte and biographer Selina Todd, and live jazz from the score.

A Taste of Honey is notable for many reasons: for Delaney’s portrayal of working class characters, for centring women in the narrative and for writing unflinchingly on race, poverty, sex and homosexuality – so skilfully that they passed censorship by the Lord Chamberlain’s office – all written in the rhythm and cadences of northern dialects covered little in other theatre of the day.

Murray Melvin starred as Geoffrey in the original production, the West End transfer and the 1961 film. Alongside a distinguished career in theatre, television and films with, among others Ken Russell and Stanley Kubrick, Melvin has also taken on the role of archivist at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. He is the author of two books: The Art of Theatre Workshop and The Theatre Royal, A History of the Building.

Joan Plowright won a TONY award for her performance at Jo at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway (1960). She made her name in the 1957 in The Entertainer, opposite Laurence Olivier (whom she married in 1961) and was Beattie in Arnold Wesker's Roots (1959). Her screen career includes roles in The Dressmaker (1988), Enchanted April (1992) and Tea with Mussolini (1999). She was made a Dame in 2004 and in 2009 she was appointed Honorary President of the English Stage Company.

Charlotte Delaney is the daughter of Shelagh Delaney and a playwright and writer. Most recently her play Sweet Responsibility premiered at Salford Arts Theatre in June 2017. 

Selina Todd is a writer and Professor of Modern History, Oxford University. Her research focuses on class, inequality, working-class history, feminism and women’s lives. She is the author of Young Women, Work, and Family in England – which won the Women's History Network book prize – and The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910-2010.

Image: Shelagh Delaney