Shelagh Delaney was just 19 when she wrote this. It debuted at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, in 1958 and gave an unfiltered look at the lives of the working class in Delaney’s home town of Salford, Manchester. Interracial relationships, single mothers and homosexuality, the last illegal in the UK at the time, were the taboo subjects she tackled.
Bijan Sheibani’s production is faithful to Delaney’s text and although some of the topics no longer feel shocking, they continue to resonate.
Teenager Jo (Gemma Dobson) and mother Helen (Jodie Prenger) move into a one-room flat opposite the gasworks. Helen is whisked away by her slimy lover, Peter (Tom Varey), while Jo falls in love with black sailor Jimmie (Durone Stokes) and is soon pregnant. In her mother’s absence, and after Jimmie is sent away, her gay friend Geof (Stuart Thompson) becomes a parent figure to Jo and the unborn baby.
The actors are joined on stage by a three-piece jazz band who accompany the characters when they break into song to relive memories and to express their frustrations. It works effectively, particularly when Prenger, who is brilliant as Helen, leans against a piano and lights a cigarette, pours herself a drink and sings about lost love at the start of the play. Mother and daughter snarl insults at each other in succession. Delaney’s characters have a wickedly funny edge – and Prenger and Dobson bring this brilliantly to the fore.
Hildegard Bechtler’s astounding set perfectly recreates deprived 1950s Britain. The kitchen is so grotesque, dark and covered in grime I initially thought it was the bathroom, forgetting that only half of British households at the time had bathrooms and most toilets were outside. There are also several entrances to the flat, where the men in Jo’s life and her own mother drop in and out, reflecting the cyclical nature of poverty and the lonely lives of its victims.
