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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for September 23, 2016

A view from the gasworks

September 23, 2016 by Terry Teachout

methuen_1959_shelaghdelaney_atasteofhoneyIn today’s Wall Street Journal I review an important off-Broadway revival of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Shelagh Delaney wrote her first play, “A Taste of Honey,” a snapshot of life in working-class England, in 1958, when she was just 18 years old. Amazingly, it had successful runs in the West End in 1959 and on Broadway the following year, was turned into a hit movie (which has just been reissued on home video by the Criterion Collection) in 1961 and was revived no less successfully on Broadway in 1981. That, alas, was the end of Delaney, who died in 2011 without writing anything else that did remotely as well. It was as if she’d made a deal with the devil: You get to hit the jackpot the first time you pull the lever, but never again.

“A Taste of Honey” continues to be staged with fair regularity in England, but it’s rarely seen in America anymore, though I reviewed a very fine production by Chicago’s Shattered Globe Theater in 2008. The Pearl Theatre Company’s new revival is the first time that it has been performed in New York since 1981. That surprises me, for it is a marvelous piece of work, at once devastatingly blunt and uncommonly poignant. No matter: Austin Pendleton, the director, and his five-person cast have done right by Delaney’s play, and now that the news is full of the hopes and fears of America’s own working class, it couldn’t be more timely.

screen-shot-2016-09-07-at-11-05-18-am“A Taste of Honey” is the story of Jo (Rebekah Brockman), a 17-year-old girl-woman from Manchester who lives with Helen (Rachel Botchan), her sluttish, self-dramatizing mother, in a dingy flat with “a lovely view of the gasworks.” Jo has longings far beyond her station, but she is knocked off the track when she falls in love with and is impregnated by a black sailor (Ade Otukoya) who ships out without knowing that he‘s going to be a father. Unwilling to live with Helen and her latest lover (Bradford Cover) and determined to bear her child instead of aborting it, Jo invites her only friend, a homeless gay art student named Geof (John Evans Reese), to move in with her.

That’s pretty much all there is to “A Taste of Honey,” which ends inconclusively, albeit purposefully so. Bright and talented but devoid of prospects, Jo has learned too young that (in her own stoic words) “we don’t ask for life, we have it thrust upon us.” What, then, will she make of hers?…

For the record, Joan Plowright and Amanda Plummer played Jo on Broadway, Rita Tushingham starred in the film version and Helen Sadler was heart-tuggingly good in the 2008 Chicago revival. Hence it’s high praise to say that Ms. Brockman is worthy of her predecessors, giving an earthy performance that feels less like acting than living….

Mr. Pendleton has given “A Taste of Honey” a staging that serves the play with scrupulous, self-effacing care….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

An excerpt from Tony Richardson’s 1961 film version of A Taste of Honey, starring Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin:

Replay: Betty Comden and Adolph Green in 1979

September 23, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAA Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a 1979 TV version of the 1977 revival of their two-person 1958 Broadway revue. Paul Trueblood is the pianist:

originally telecast in 1979:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Ivy Compton-Burnett on self-sacrifice

September 23, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“‘I never know why self-sacrifice is noble,’ said Miss Burke. ‘Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?’

“‘It is no better,’ said Hester, ‘and it is not really held to be.’”

Ivy Compton-Burnett, Mother and Son

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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