Pioneering Theatre, Music and Community Arts

 In Wolverhampton from 1980 to 2013

Wolverhampton

1982 - 2013

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“Excellent - from the first phone call to the curtain call!”

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A Taste of Honey

1: The Stage and Television Today 4.04.85

Zip Theatre Company has mounted a masterly production of Shelagh Delaney's "A Taste of Honey". On a tour of schools and colleges in the West Midlands, Jon Lingard-Lane's atmospheric production combines realism with lyrical qualities. Avoiding stereotypes in restless girl, wayward mother, romantic sailor and homosexual friend, Lingard-Lane extracts the play's gritty humour and reflections of the troubled undercurrents of society.

Dyll Ferreday gives a gripping performance as the schoolgirl daughter, wrestling against a dreary existence in an attic slum, as she succumbs to the embrace of a passing sailor, engagingly played by Amos Edwards. Tim Scott is a sympathetic art student who protects her. Cathy Pemberton brings abrasive charm and beguiling style to the feckless mother, while John Edgar conveys world-weary cynicism as the handy man in the mother's life.

The production does not hark back to late sixties, when the play was written, but puts the focus on an unchanging society of frustrated aspirations and the quirks of fate.

2: Express and Star 11.03.85 Taste of Honey is strong as ever

Shelagh Delaney, who failed her 11 plus and was a late developer, has a natural affinity with the tensions, anxieties and dilemmas of young people. Her play A Taste of Honey, written in 1957 when she was 18, is a CSE subject.

Wolverhampton's Zip Theatre, taking it on a tour of schools and college theatres in the West Midlands before a public performance at the Moreton Centre, Old Fallings Lane, Bushbury, on March 21, combines realism with its underlying lyrical qualities.

The strength and vibrant humour of Jon Lingard-Lane's production emerge from the passionate relationships between restless girl, wayward mother, romantic sailor and homosexual friend.

Dyll Ferreday gives an incisive performance as the schoolgirl daughter in a dreary attic slum, falling into the embrace of a black sailor (Amos Edwards) and getting pregnant. Tim Scott is a sympathetic art student who comforts and protects her. Cathy Pemberton has abrasive charm as the feckless mother and John Edgar suggests world-weary cynicism as the shady man in the mother's life.

Mr. Lingard-Lane allows the simple plot to take care of itself, while he steers the production towards a sub-world in which moods, vague desires and half-expressed aspirations are mixed with fate.