Margaret Leighton fan Shelagh Delaney went to see Leighton in Terence Rattigan's Variation On A Theme and having done so declared that 1) the play was rubbish - by Rattigan's high standards she was right - and 2) that she could write better than Rattigan - by anyone's standards she was hopelessly wrong. So she went home and apparently assembled every cliché in the book - one-parent family constantly one-jump ahead of the landlord, sluttish mother one step up from a genuine whore, confused, neglected teenage daughter, plainer than Kansas and ripe to be seduced by the first man who gives her a second look, mother abandons girl for toyboy Jack-the-lad, girl becomes pregnant by, natch, black man who then abandons her, add one obligatory gay man and stir til indigestible. Delaney didn't write characters she wrote caricatures but maybe at the time - 1961 - when the young Turks were routing the Old Guard no one could tell the difference. Not one to let plausibility get in the way of a good cliché Delaney has mother and daughter (Dora Bryan, urrrgh, and Rita Tushingham) told to come up with the rent by tomorrow or else, doing a 'moonlight flit' straight to a new flat that is waiting for them as if by magic; days later Bryan informs Tushingham - who's still at school - that she's on her own as she, Mother, is moving in with Jack-the-lad, who doesn't want a kid along. No mention of how a school girl is supposed to pay the rent but that might involve Plotting, not Delaney's forte. This is an Alice-in-Wonderland world where people meet on the flimsiest of pretexts - Murray Melvin buys a pair of shoes off Tushingham - tries on the first pair she offers, doesn't bother to walk around in them to see how they feel - meets her again later as both of them are watching the Whit Walks - teenagers have nothing better to do with their time in Delaney's world - spend a day at the fair and before you can say 'well-made' play Tushingham has invited him to live with her. Give me a BREAK. For the record Rattigan, who wrote something like 30 plays and 20 screenplays, is still being revived today. Delaney, if she's lucky, is stacking shelves in Safeway.
Review of A Taste of Honey
