A Taste Of Honey

National Theatre, London SE1

5 Stars

Unfortunately Shelagh Delaney never quite repeated the huge success she had with her first play A Taste Of Honey, an acute social observation of working-class life in northern England.

Although written when she was just 18 years old, very few plays followed in her career as a playwright and the ones that did never quite reached the critical acclaim earned by A Taste Of Honey.

And despite its original success - as well as Tony Richardson's excellent 1961 film adaptation - the play has rarely been seen on stage since its premiere.

But director Bijan Sheibani more than compensates with this entertaining and well-staged revival at the National.

The play opens on a dreary day in Salford, with the bleak gasworks looming in the background of the grey and dismal street 17-year-old Jo and her mum Helen are about to move into.

Their new flat is about as dismal as their new street - they're surrounded by peeling wallpaper, scruffy furniture and little else. It becomes clear very quickly that Jo and Helen have a complex relationship.

Helen, portrayed perfectly by the consistently excellent Lesley Sharp, is carefree, inconsiderate and bitter, while the equally brilliant Kate O'Flynn's Jo is difficult, confrontational and downright obnoxious.

When Helen becomes involved with a younger and wealthy man, Jo turns to her black sailor boyfriend Jimmie (Kofi Abrek) who, after proposing, leaves her pregnant and alone.

In the next act, the abandoned Jo has befriended a young gay art student Geoffrey (Harry Hepple) who moves in, planning to be her baby's surrogate father. A bitter-sweet emotional rollercoaster ensues.

A Taste Of Honey made its debut in 1958 - two years after John Osborne's groundbreaking Look Back in Anger - and it has always been lumped with the "Angry Young Man" kitchen-sink dramas of the 1950s and '60s, generally written by mostly middle-class men.

But while the play is pretty much set around a kitchen sink and deals with the complex, difficult emotional issues life chucks at us, Delaney's play lacks much of the anger that fuelled the likes of Osborne, Kingsley Amis and Colin Wilson.

In fact it's a funny and heart-warming experience, brought to life in Sheibani's revival. Helen and Jo's arguments are often interspersed with witty jibes - helped by the excellent timing of double act O'Flynn and Sharp - and dance routines to Paul Englishby's jazzy score.

Its taboo-breaking themes of interracial relationships, alcoholism, single parenthood and homosexuality may not have quite the eye-popping effect they would have done in the 1950s, but they'll still ruffle a few feathers.

Highly recommended.