She was just 18 when she wrote A Taste Of Honey, one of the defining working-class and feminist plays of the late 1950s and early 1960s. It began as a novel, but Delaney later admitted she was too busy going out socialising to produce an 80,000-word book and decided on a play instead. She took a fortnight off work and completed it in 10 days. Her dysfunctional characters were completely at odds with the prevailing theatrical productions of the time. It showed working-class women from a working-class woman’s point of view, had a gay man as a central and sympathetic figure, and a black character who was not a racial stereotype. The mainstream drama critics were scathing but it made a huge impression on the young writers, artists and film makers of the time, chiming with their anti-establishment views.
The play opened in 1958, at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, London. In the production’s programme Delaney was described as “the antithesis of London’s ‘angry young men’. She knows what she is angry about.” A year later A Taste Of Honey moved to the West End and it was also performed on Broadway, with Joan Plowright as Jo and Angela Lansbury as her mother. In 1961 it was released as a film, starring a relatively unknown actress called Rita Tushingham as Jo and Dora Bryan as her mother. It won multiple BAFTAs and Tushingham won Best Newcomer at Cannes.
A Taste Of Honey reflected not only the gritty reality of many people’s lives but marked the great cultural and social change that was coming. Tushingham said in 2020: “A lot of the reaction was - people like that don’t exist – by which they meant homosexuals, single mothers and people in mixed-race relationships. But they did.” In 1986, the Smiths’ lead singer Morrissey said: “I’ve never made any secret of the fact that at least 50 percent of my reason for writing can be blamed on Shelagh Delaney.” She continued to write all her life, but her subsequent work never quite matched her first success. She died of breast cancer aged 72 and is survived by her daughter and three grandchildren.
See Delaney interviewed on ITN in 1959 here.
