A Taste of Honey ★★★★
Helen Black and Rebecca Ryan in ‘A Taste of Honey’
It’s not every day you see a member of the audience clobbered by an actor. In A Taste of Honey, the weapon was a book, which skittered off the stage at one point and into a grey-haired lady in the front row. She obligingly slipped it back onto the lip of the stage.
The mishap was an indication of the tense kinetic and emotional energy that crackled through the cast and the production. This was never more present when Helen, the narcissistic mother, and her highly defended daughter Jo were going hammer and tongs at each other with an intensity that never missed a beat. Both Lucy Black’s Helen and Rebecca Ryan’s Jo are authentic characters: damaged, vulnerable, recognisable and needy. Humour and bleakness blend with vicious sharpness and who knows what keeps mother and daughter chained together? Is it love, jealousy, or indeed, powerful and palpable need?
There is still time to catch this compelling production which runs until the 9th of February.
Picture Credit: The Royal Lyceum Theatre
Read Sian Fiddimore’s review here.
An anthology of modern short fiction recounting the quirkiness of the everyday, featuring DJ Mac and others.
DJ Mac is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland who fouters (dithers) with an itchy, scratchy pen in the moments when the bewilderment provoked by life settles. He is easily distracted by the bright pictures in his gallery.
