A Taste of Honey

Jo hasn’t had it easy, growing up with a volatile, alcoholic mother, moving from one bed-sit to another. Until Jo meets Jimmie, a black sailor, who she spends the night with while her mum is gallivanting with a younger man. Jo finds out she is pregnant, and with her mother abandoning her, seeks solace with a homosexual friend, Geoffrey, who becomes a leading father figure to Jo. But when Jo’s mother reappears, the life that she has so carefully put together for herself starts to fall away again. A Taste of Honey was Shelagh Delaney‘s first play written when she was 19 years old. The first London production in 1958, won her great critical acclaim and popular success. Two years later Delaney received the Drama Critics’ Circle Award for the plays New York City production. It was made into a notable film in 1961. A Taste of Honey was voted joint 50th of the National Theatre’s top 100 plays of the millennium.