GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
A Taste of Honey, Trafalgar Studios London
Excellent revival of Shelagh Delaney's classic Salford drama
COMPELLING: Gemma Dobson, Tom Varey and Jodie Prenger
[Marc-Brenner]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
SHELAGH Delaney’s most successful play, written at the age of 19 and first staged in 1958, is so good that it would be difficult to make a bad job of it.
It needs to be staged with the minimum of fuss and Bijan Sheibani, resisting any urge to take liberties with characters, plot or script, has taken great care to invest this National Theatre production with a grittily intimate atmosphere that chimes with the compact surrounds of Trafalgar Studios.
Hildegard Bechtler’s set brilliantly captures the sad, shabbily claustrophobic post-war Salford flat in which mother Helen (Jodie Prenger) and daughter Jo (Gemma Dobson) wage their battles. It’s almost possible to smell the dirty old town outside, with its noxious gasworks, slaughterhouse and canal.
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by Helen McSherry