A Taste of Honey

In 1958, the hottest playwright in London was a 19-year-old, working-class woman from Lancashire named Shelagh Delaney. That may not seem quite as impressive today, but back then, when the theater was largely the domain of upper-middle-class men (let's be honest: it still is), it was a big deal. Delaney seemed like a Martian, a radical departure from even the "angry young men" (like Look Back in Anger author John Osborne) who immediately preceded her. Some hopeful critics hailed her as a harbinger of times to come, when the stage would be used to tell the stories of everyone in society, not just the privileged few. We're still on that journey, but the Pearl Theatre Company reminds us of where we've been in its mounting of Delaney's breakthrough play, A Taste of Honey, which has not been seen in New York since a 1981 Broadway run. Unfortunately, the story surrounding the play is a lot more interesting than the actual drama onstage.

Two women walk into a dirty flat in Manchester: Helen (Rachel Botchan) is the mother of Jo (Rebekah Brockman), a mouthy teenager with a decidedly unkind opinion of mom. Of course, she has her reasons: Helen leads a seemingly never-ending parade of men into their family home (the address of which is also constantly in flux). The latest is the eyepatch-wearing Peter (a too-goofy-to-be-threatening Bradford Cover). Jo has a beau of her own in Jimmy (Ade Otukoya and his alluring smile), a black sailor in the Royal Navy. Jo plans to marry Jimmy, but when she becomes pregnant with his child, he disappears. Mom also splits to marry Peter, leaving Jo on her own.

Enter Geoffrey (John Evans Reese), Jo's new gay roommate who offers to marry her in Jimmy's stead (she politely declines). But even if their relationship isn't legally recognized, it has all the familiar trappings of domesticity. Jo studies a book on raising babies while Geoff mops the linoleum around her. They're like a working-class Will and Grace, but from the later seasons when they tried to have a baby together and people stopped watching out of boredom.

Certainly, some of the lines concerning Jimmy's race will be enough to make sensitive audience members squirm ("There's still a bit of jungle in you somewhere," Jo says, looking hungrily into his eyes), but that isn't really the element that makes this play feel dusty. While director Austin Pendleton admirably leaves the script intact (politically incorrect warts and all), he does little to elevate the staging from that of a museum piece. Barbara A. Bell's period costumes are perhaps a little too fetching for genuinely poor people. Harry Feiner's busy set helps compensate for this by looking truly rundown. A sickly floral print couch sets the scene, while everything appears slightly faded under Eric Southern's jaundiced lighting. It feels like the theatrical equivalent of picking up an old mass-market paperback from the bargain shelves outside the Strand.

All of this is a real shame because it obscures just how revolutionary A Taste of Honey was when it first appeared on the London stage in 1958. In a time when the Lord Chamberlain still regularly vetoed the performance of "immoral" plays (British theater was officially censored until 1968, relegating important works by authors like Henrik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller to private members' clubs), A Taste of Honey depicted an unmarried, pregnant woman cohabitating with a gay man, both preparing to form a proto-queer nuclear family upon the arrival of her biracial baby. Everything about the script vibrates with life, energy, and the will to persevere with laughter in the face of massive social obstacles. Sadly, little of that spirit is present in Pendleton's workmanlike but unremarkable staging.

This even extends to the onstage jazz trio (imagined by original director Joan Littlewood), which Pendleton kept for this production. Their playing is buoyant and lively, helping to maintain levity and musicality even through ostensibly tragic moments — and levity in light of tragedy is very much what this play is about. Disappointingly, the few interactions between actors and musicians feel halfhearted; and while the three musicians are undeniably talented, it doesn't help that they look terminally bored by the play happening around them.

Blessedly, the production benefits from a stellar leading lady in Brockman, who helps hold the show together with her ballsy performance (she served much the same function with her memorable portrayal of Antigone in the ill-fated revival of The Burial at Thebes earlier this year). Brockman's Jo is simultaneously vulnerable and strong, suggesting someone who has been regularly knocked down, but always gets back up again (she's also the only member of the cast to maintain an unshakable Northern dialect).

Her primary costars are also excellent in their respective roles: Botchan has perfect comic timing as Helen, while Reese delivers an authentic and layered portrayal of a gay Mancunian (vaguely hesitant sass for days).

Still, none of them are able to pep up the proceedings, which feel a lot more dated than they really should. A Taste of Honey is a thrilling and unconventional work of theater, but you wouldn't really know it from this sleepy revival.