A Taste of Honey was first staged in 1958 by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company, and is now established as a modern classic. This comic and poignant play written by a then nineteen-year-old working-class Lancashire girl was praised at its London premiere by Graham Greene as having "all the freshness of Mr Osborne's Look Back in Anger and a greater maturity." The play is a coming-of-age story about Jo, a seventeen year old woman and her mother Helen, who may be alcoholic, and often neglects Jo in favour of her own romantic interests. Jo enters into a relationship with a black sailor who fails to keep his promise to return to her after going to sea. She is pregnant by him, and has largely negative feelings about being a mother. A friend, an implicitly gay art student who cares for her until her mother returns to the scene. The play examined questions of racism, poverty, gender, sexual orientation and mental disability. It was made into a highly acclaimed film in 1962.
