Climate activist and writer JANE ROGERS introduces her new collection, Fire-ready, and examines the connection between life and fiction
IN A year of limited opportunity for theatre visits due to Covid, my highlight was A Taste of Honey at the Trafalgar Studios in London, which I managed to catch ahead of the first lockdown.
In the National Theatre staging of Shelagh Delaney’s best-known play, Hildegard Bechtler’s set brilliantly captured the sad and shabbily claustrophobic post-war Salford flat in which mother Helen (Jodie Prenger) and daughter Jo (Gemma Dobson) go into battle. It was possible almost to smell the dirty old town outside, with its noxious gasworks, slaughterhouse and canal.
The cast were uniformly excellent, delivering Delaney’s caustic dialogue with a tangible appreciation for its cadences and nuances.
MAYER WAKEFIELD recommends a musical ‘love letter’ to black power activists of the 1970s
MARY CONWAY applauds the success of Beth Steel’s bitter-sweet state-of-the-nation play
MARY CONWAY relishes two matchless performers and a masterclass in tightly focused wordplay



