"My usual self is a very unusual self - and don't you forget it!"
Shelagh Delaney's play A Taste of Honey (1958) is a feminine riposte to John Osborne and Alan Sillitoe's "Angry Young Men." Honey provocatively tackles class warfare, miscegenation and homosexuality, but at heart it's about a working class girl battling social stigma. Tony Richardson presented the play onstage, directing its film adaptation in 1961.Jo (Rita Tushingham) is a free-spirited teen detesting her life in Salford. Her mother Helen (Dora Bryant) is a bitter alcoholic, indulging in a loveless affair with wealthy young Peter (Robert Stephens). Jo has a fling with Jimmy (Paul Danquah), a black sailor who gets her pregnant. Dejected, she befriends Geoffrey (Murray Melvin), a gay man feeling similarly outcast. Unable to connect with the larger world, Jo and Geoffrey find solace in each other.
A Taste of Honey is familiar enough to kitchen sink devotees. Jo is an outsider from the start, forfeiting handball games and scorning her school chums, while her sluttish mother earns her social scorn. Like many Richardson authority figures, Helen is well-meaning yet self-absorbed: "Why can't you learn from my mistakes?" she asks. Geoffrey's sexuality marks him as an outcast: he longs for normalcy, even offering to marry Jo. Their friendship forms the movie's backbone, providing a warmth generally lacking in this scalding subgenre.
Delaney's distaff approach adds a wrinkle beyond Jimmy Porter or Colin Smith's inarticulate rage. Jo's interracial fling carries deeper stigma than those heroes' philandering, and greater consequences. Jo's dealt a bum hand, but her warmth and self-confidence never abate. Befriending Geoffrey bolsters her further: what's better than a nonjudgmental friend? Naturally things can't stay so rosy, but Honey's melancholy conclusion at least leaves Jo hope for self-improvement.
Richardson's direction is pretty standard, full of peeling flats and squalid factory scape. Not to seem reductive, but those familiar with kitchen sink flicks know what to expect. For auteurists there's a beachfront carnival recalling The Entertainer, while obnoxious school boys tromp through several scenes: a bonfire's framed to give Jo a symbolic witch burning. John Addison's incongruously bouncy score adds ironic counterpoint.
Rita Tushingham scored a few high-profile roles (Doctor Zhivago, The Knack... and How to Get It) but never became a star. Just 19 years old, she's a unique actress with her beaming yet inscrutable face, coarse Mancunian accent and insouciant energy. Murray Melvin (Barry Lyndon) makes a likeable foil, though Geoffrey skirts stereotype. Dora Bryan (The Fallen Idol) and Robert Stephens (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) are the sort of disagreeable squares beloved of Kitchen Sink dramas.
Despite its grimy setting, A Taste of Honey seems upbeat compared to its peers. If Jo and Geoffrey are outcasts, Richardson allows them a fleeting moment of happiness. Too bad her mom seems to ruin everything.
