film virtues in a taste of honey . Mr Richardson &apos;s skilful direction . the film version of Miss Shelagh Delaney &apos;s play a taste of honey opens at the Leicester Square Theatre tomorrow . it has been produced and directed by Mr Tony Richardson , who is also part-author with Miss Delaney of the script , and the great advantages to be derived from this unity of conception and control are everywhere apparent . this is not a filmed play . it has been conceived throughout in terms of the cinema , and again and again it is the visual qualities of the story , and the marriage of the central characters to their background , which bring the film so vividly to life . in Fanny , which also has its premiere tomorrow , the director , Mr Joshua Logan , attempted but failed to create the atmosphere of a city . in a taste of honey Mr Richardson has taken a town in the industrial north of England and has made it live . the shabby streets and wet pavements , the school play-grounds , the public monuments and the rubbish strewn canals - even the worn head-stones in the churchyard , sacred to the memory of - are seen as an integral part of the story . the background is always alive and always changing ; but the visual image is in keeping with the spoken word . we accept implicitly that these characters have grown naturally and inevitably from out of these surroundings . against this industrial setting Mr Richardson has told Miss Delaney &apos;s story . its faults are still apparent . the plot is still shapeless and inconclusive - indeed it is little more than an anecdote of city life , with a beginning but no end - and the characters often seem to lack consistency . but there is heart in the telling , and an intense realism in the situation . a young girl lives in a single dingy room with her slatternly , promiscuous mother . in such surroundings she learns sex is something sordid , and when she experiences it for the first time herself it is incoherently , clumsily , but half shyly and half inquisitively . as is the case in Fanny her first lover is a sailor who leaves her to bear his child and sails away . in Fanny the pregnant girl is befriended by an old man . here it is a young homosexual , estranged from women but yet moved by a strong maternal instinct to the unborn child as much as to the expectant mother , who acts as a protector and comforter to her in her hour of need . he shares her room and gives her his forlorn gift of companionship and sympathy - you need someone to love you while you are looking for someone to love . Miss Dora Bryan plays the mother as a flamboyant , down-to-earth sensualist who lacks perception but is not altogether without heart . Mr Murray Melvin is the homosexual , his long lugubrious face reflecting a hidden and unexpressed compassion . Miss Rita Tushingham is the girl . it is always difficult when assessing a moving and eloquent performance by a young and immature screen actress to judge the extent to which her acting has been inspired by skilled and sensitive direction . Mr Richardson has left his stamp so clearly on the rest of this film that some credit must be given to him ; but here is undeniably a performance of surprising range and deep emotion , reflected in the face of an ordinary schoolgirl that is seemingly without make-up but is illuminated by a wonderful pair of eyes . it is Mr Richardson &apos;s great gift that he can show a face in close-up and reveal the thoughts of the mind without a word being spoken . this he does repeatedly in this film , especially with Miss Tushingham . concertos enliven programme . apart from Tchaikovsky &apos;s Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture , last night &apos;s prom was entirely devoted to twentieth-century music , with two piano concertos by Alan Rawsthorne and Prokofiev ( each composer &apos;s no 1 in the medium ) to enliven both halves of the programme . the two works are true bravura concertos lying within the grasp only of players of virtuoso technique ; they are alike , too , in placing far more emphasis on crisply sparkling extravert brilliance than on inwardness of feeling though admittedly Rawsthorne briefly becomes more searching in his beautiful central chaconne . the soloist , Miss Moura Lympany , could not have been better chosen , for she has the clear-cut agility and vivacity of musicianship necessary for this kind of music , and temperamentally does not suffer from any temptation to delve more deeply into the notes than they warrant . on their own , the B.B.C symphony orchestra and Sir Malcolm Sargent went to the rescue of Pohjola &apos;s daughter , one of Sibelius &apos;s offspring now very much on the shelf . this is vividly scored but essentially naive programme music , perhaps more likely to appeal on home ground where the Kalevala is as real as the Bible . Sir Malcolm Sargent and the orchestra made every point with graphic clarity , and almost the same was true of Vaughan Williams &apos;s sixth symphony , which stood as the centrepiece of the programme . the exception was the finale of the symphony , which was played just a shade too fast and not quite insubstantially enough to convey the full , hollow horror of its implications - the globe &apos;s vast desolation after the extinction of all human life . Miss Dodie Smith provides for kitchen sink . from our special correspondent . Liverpool , Sept 12 . in her latest play , launched here last night , Miss Dodie Smith , accepting the challenge of the times , has made room for a kitchen sink . its presence does nothing to sour these new arrivals among the author &apos;s brood of brain children . or should one call them heart children ? all their hearts are in the right place , and they run true and sweet to family form . there is even an older and more formidable challenge than the sink itself to test their fundamental niceness , for this basement kitchen of an old house in a London square is also the dining room of a boarding establishment run by an amiable and fluttery spinster . all her guests , whatever their age , lend a hand with the washing up ( which is frequent ) with almost as much enjoyment as if at last some miraculous detergent were being advertised in the live theatre . no one is cantankerous , there are no petty jealousies or mutual animosities . who but Miss Dodie Smith would have thought boarding house comedy could be written without them ? this boarding house has a pronounced list to stageward . it accommodates young members of the profession and also a middle-aged actor manqu&amp;eacute; who has been out of touch with the world for 20 years and is at first suspected of having been serving a prison sentence . actually he has been caring for his invalid but equally histrionic wife who has died and left him free to fulfil , with her blessing , his long thwarted ambition . when he has been gently de-hammed for the modern stage by a young actress who is his fellow-lodger he does land a contract . in the meanwhile we watch him perform marvels of cooking and , generally at the same time , listen to him delivering the most purple and familiar patches of Shakespeare . there are a pair of pathetic fuddy-duddies who have parted with their house because they have had a good offer for it , and a hypochondriacal old bachelor who proposes to the gentle proprietress , but is not accepted until she has made the surprising confession that she , unlike her once suspected guest , has really been to prison . this is Miss Smith &apos;s highest flight of imagination ; the offence was the absentminded theft of a library book for which in her youth the otherwise innocent Miss Edie got 14 days without the option . the inclusion of a titled char on the establishment is perhaps the most deliberately modern touch . Miss Jennifer Stirling plays Miss Edie with great skill and charm and Mr Willard Stoker effectively coordinates a good cast . rare acting in Betti play . a quietly effective production . Oxford Playhouse : Irene . directed by Bryan Stonehouse . from our special correspondent . Oxford , Sept 12 . Irene is not perhaps one of Betti &apos;s masterpieces , but it is a splendidly efficient play , constructed with sure instinct for theatrical effect which never seemed to let this dramatist down . the background is that rough , raw , savage land of southern Italy which Betti explored in a number of plays . here it is combined with another theme dear to his heart , the workings of justice . a nice , simple sergeant of the Carabinieri arrives in a strange village at night to investigate some irregularities concerning the town clerk . by chance he lights first of all upon the clerk &apos;s house , stays there for the night and becomes disturbingly involved with the clerk , his faded , pretentious wife and , particularly , his beautiful crippled daughter , Irene . the next morning he hears the evidence against his erstwhile host , and learns of the bitter enmity in which the mayor and the rest hold him . where does the truth lie ? how far can the sergeant , caught between his feelings for Irene and her family on the one hand and the evidence and the veiled blackmail of the mayor on the other reach a fair and unbiased decision ? especially when he learns that the girl , whom he believed pure and innocent , is in fact the local prostitute . despite this she still retains a strange innocence , somewhere between that of the idiot and that of the saint , which sets up violent and contradictory emotions in those who visit her as well as in the sergeant : they want her to go and yet they want her to stay ; he does not know until almost too late whether he loves her or loathes her . arguably , the dramatist has committed a technical error in allowing Irene to speak for herself ; we would be altogether clearer in our minds about her if she remained a flawed but beautiful enigma , seen but not heard . however , Miss Pinkie Johnstone makes her few brief scenes effective , and Mr Dinsdale Landen , in the longest and most exacting role , that of the sergeant , gives a performance of rare intelligence and restrained power . Mr Bryan Stonehouse &apos;s production is quietly effective , giving full value to the formal elements of Betti &apos;s writing without over-emphasizing them . a morality play on ambition . last night &apos;s play in the play of the week series on independent television , then we fall , by Mr Paul Ferris , was a morality on the not unfamiliar theme of the destructive power of unbridled ambition . it went , perhaps , some distance beyond most treatments of its subject by attempting to generate a melodramatic inevitability which left its central character and the world around him in complete , unredeemable desolation . we could , perhaps , say whether or not the attempt succeeded if we had a little more faith in the way in which Mr Ferris manipulated his characters . Mervyn Morris abandons his job as a pilot in a Welsh seaport , finds a position with the local paper , treads underfoot everyone , especially his wife , with whom he deals : his wife leaves him for the paper &apos;s shy , gentle editor . at which he prevails upon his father-in-law , a miserly , fanatical Welsh nationalist , to murder the editor for him . no suspicions are aroused but no problems are solved for he loses his job because , at the moment of the murder , he is standing in front of television cameras and , with his nerves on edge , talking tactlessly . Mr William Lucas ( Morris ) is always insensitively pushing , Miss Sheila Allen his wife , always palely appealing , Mr James Maxwell , the editor , always comically abashed by the events , and Mr Aubrey Richards , the father-in-law , always comically grotesque ; they were not asked to modulate from their set moods but played with proper efficiency and , in the case of Mr Richards , with lavish and suitably gaudy colour . only Mr Lucas &apos;s actions , therefore , arose explicably from appreciable motives . the rest , one feels , were driven to effective action by the author in spite of the ineffectuality with which he had endowed them . one hopes that he is not asking us to believe that , because of their odd accents , they act oddly like the queer foreigners of tradition . 