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Kitchen-sink drama is the name given to plays that depict the daily struggles of ordinary working class people. Plays in this category often deal with social issues such as poor living conditions, lack of employment, poverty and turbulent relationships.

A Taste of Honey examines all of these topics and could therefore be referred to as an example of kitchen-sink drama. Jo and Helen have a difficult relationship with each other as well as with other characters in the play, Peter in particular. Hey! Don’t start bossing me about. You’re not my father, Jo tells him.

Helen and Jo live in a squalid flat in a rundown part of the city and struggle because of a lack of money. Helen admits to Jo that they have no choice but to live in a flat such as the one she has chosen because, It’s all I can afford.

Social drama

During the 1950s younger working class playwrights began to write plays that included ideas and problems they themselves were concerned with. One of these playwrights was a man called John Osborne who wrote Look Back in Anger.

Like Delaney’s A Taste of Honey, Osborne’s play is concerned with characters from the working classes. Delaney’s protagonist is the young, working class Jo and Osborne’s hero is the working class Jimmy Porter. Jimmy is angry about the way society treats him and he wants things to change.

Look Back in Anger caused some controversy when it was originally produced and the impression A Taste of Honey made was the same. After all, Delaney is confronting her audience with a young girl who becomes a single mother as a result of a relationship with a black man and whose best friend is homosexual.

This was not typical of many plays that had been previously performed in the 1950s, particularly as so many of them dealt with the lives and concerns of middle class people. These plays tended to shy away from controversial issues such as homosexuality and racism.