Sweet 'Taste of Honey' in tune with the times
Life doesn't unfold very sweetly for the discontented, marginalized characters in "A Taste of Honey," Shelagh Delaney's 1958 play notable for its unsentimental portrayal of family dysfunction, poverty, interracial romance, teen pregnancy and homosexuality at a time when not many dramas addressed those issues.
Ahead of its time then, the domestic drama about the hardscrabble life and contentious relationship between bright, embittered 17-year-old Jo and her selfish, neglectful mother Helen feels entirely of its time today. The play holds up surprisingly well thanks to the then 18-year-old Delaney's keen sense of character and language, as well as the timelessness of her story which will continue to resonate so long as generations of unskilled, poorly educated, impoverished families remain trapped in misery from which they cannot extricate themselves.
There may be no company better suited to reviving the play than Shattered Globe Theatre, whose almost unrivaled ability to invigorate mid-century drama director Jeremy Wechsler reaffirms in his deftly cast and impeccably acted production.
The action unfolds in a dreary apartment (appropriately threadbare rooms designed by Kevin Hagan) sandwiched between a slaughter house and the gas works in dodgy part of Manchester, England. It's here that the ferociously self-interested, determinedly nonmaternal and perpetually itinerant Helen (a callous, calculating Linda Reiter) lands following her latest failed affair. She brings with her the disapproving, deliberately hostile Jo, effortlessly played with a combination of need and enmity by British actress Helen Sadler, who has quietly distinguished herself over her last few seasons in Chicago.
While Helen pursues Peter (an abrasive, menacing Jeremy van Meter), a younger man with a drinking problem and an Oedipal complex, the lonely Jo finds the love she craves - love her mother denies - in the arms of a sailor played by the disarming Bryson Engelen.
Act Two finds Jo pregnant and abandoned by her faithless lover and her now-married mother. The embittered Jo fears she will become like her mother, showering affection on everyone but her child and burdening another generation with a miserable family life and never climbing up from the lowest rung on the economic ladder. Enter the gentle, selfless Geoff (a ruefully dignified performance by Kevin Viol), a gay art student who moves in with Jo to help during her pregnancy. In Geoff, Jo finds camaraderie and quite possibly salvation from the miserable life she has endured. Still, she can't help hurting him with careless taunts that recall her mother's insults and suggest that such deep-seeded dysfunction and despair takes more than kind words to repair.
The chance to watch a pair of highly skilled actresses at the top of their game makes Wechsler's straightforward, well-crafted production a show worth seeing. Like Shattered Globe's best work, it's grounded in the resounding, inherently credible acting of its ensemble. That's especially true of the well-matched Sadler and Reiter who expertly capture the self-loathing and self-pity of people who may get a taste of honey, but will never savor its sweetness very long.
"A Taste of Honey"
3 1/2 stars
Location: Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago
Times: 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through July 5
Running time: About 2 hours, 25 minutes with intermission
Tickets: $27-$35
Parking: $6 with ticket stub at the Children's Memorial Hospital parking garage
Box office: (773) 871-3000 or shatteredglobe.org
Rating: For high school and older, contains subject matter of a sexual nature