´óÏó´«Ã½

It’s a vibrant tale that holds a damning mirror up to the place it is set, namely Salford in the 1950s. So when the Lowry decided to hold a season of community plays, it was an obvious choice for inclusion.

In the end, the power and passion of the play has meant it being placed as the season closer, a fact that gives an extra pressure on its amateur cast. Thankfully, professional director Chris Wright has been on hand to help them through it and he says that while there is an obvious pressure to performing such a well-known piece, his cast have coped with it well.

"But that wasn’t what was daunting. What was the challenge was that this is a long play with a small cast and we have taken the actors from the local community.

"It is a very wordy play. Shelagh captured the accents and the conversational style of the people of Salford so well, it is a real challenge for the actors.

"But there is a surprising number of amateur actors who have a vast experience of stage performance. You often find that they have more experience than professionals, as it is easier to build it up when you aren’t relying on it to live.

"This cast did see it as a huge task, but that’s my responsibility as a professional director, to come in and break the play down into consumable sections. But they have taken the play in their stride and it’s very reassuring to see the kind of talent and commitment that is available from people who want to be involved in a community project."

A contemporary relevance

Aside from the cast though, Chris sees this as an ideal opportunity to create his own version of a play he has always loved.

In order to make sure that he didn’t make a poor production himself, Chris thought long and hard about which way to take his direction. He eventually decided to treat the piece as a revival in the original spirit of Delaney’s script, though he’s aware that it has a resonance in the modern era.

"You can’t really take it out of the time in which it’s set, as it deals with certain taboos and values that were only prevalent at the time.

"But it doesn’t feel like I’m dusting off a relic. It is a period piece but it does have a lot of contemporary relevance, because it looks at the impact of family and environment on a young person.

"While I’ve not wanted to politicise the play at all, the very depiction of a young 16 year old single mother living in a small one-bedroom flat in Salford, who has to do two or three jobs in order to survive, will automatically have ramifications in the way it is perceived.

"The actors themselves have discovered in rehearsals that they can relate their own life experiences to everything depicted in the play. The same thing that happened fifty years ago happens today; when a young single girl is about to have a baby, she can find herself in difficult social, financial and emotional situations.

A means of expression

For Chris, what gives the production an extra significance is the fact it is an amateur cast, as he sees that as a tribute to the playwright herself.

"It does give it an extra resonance that it is being performed by amateurs. When Shelagh Delaney wrote the play, she was only 19 and she’d never written a play before, but she sent off a draft to John Littlewood at the Stratford Theatre. That was a very brave thing to do.

"She’d found a means of expression and she took a chance. She risked having it sent back, having it laughed at, it being dismissed. But the chance paid off as it received a London premiere a year later.

"This production follows in the spirit of that. There are individuals from the community that have found their means of expression, taken a chance and got involved.

The theatre is an intimidating environment to step into if you have no professional training, so the cast are testimony to Shelagh’s ambition and will feel the same way she did when they come to perform on the opening night."

A Taste Of Honey is at the Lowry from Wed 14 Nov to Sat 24 Nov. Tickets are £8.