A Taste of Honey review – Shelagh Delaney’s 50s grenade explodes again

Royal Exchange, Manchester
Jill Halfpenny and Rowan Robinson star in a revival of the 1958 play, staged near its setting of Salford

Gather a group of writers together and they will soon be complaining about the question producers inevitably pose about their projects: “Why now?” It’s a fair question, and one that needs to be posed when reviving a play – such as Shelagh Delaney’s defining work A Taste of Honey, first staged in 1958.

On its premiere, the play was a sensation. It now makes its way back to the stage at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, not far from where it is set, in Delaney’s home town of Salford. Modern audiences are warned of outdated language and attitudes to race and homosexuality, but when you have a character saying she will “drown it” when she discovers that her white daughter will be having a black baby, there needs to be a serious interrogation of the necessity of the play for today.