Star date: 15th November 2014

DELANEY'S THE LION IN LOVE GETS FIRST STAGING SINCE 1963

The Lion In Love by Eat Theatre
Wednesday 19th – Saturday 22nd November 7:30pm
Salford Arts Theatre £10/£6

Apart from A Taste Of Honey, The Lion In Love is the only other stage play written by Shelagh Delaney, and it hasn't been staged professionally since 1963.

To kickstart Salford's Shelagh Delaney Day, Eat Theatre is reviving The Lion In Love at Salford Arts Theatre. It's a play that nods to Aesop's fable warning of needless sacrifice for foolish love.

Full details here...

Back in the 1960s after Shelagh Delaney stunned the theatre world with A Taste Of Honey, she produced a second play The Lion In Love, centred on the suitability of relationships and featuring three generations of a family and their affairs, trials, tribulations and traps.

Now The Lion In Love is to be staged professionally for the first time since 1963 by Eat Theatre, directed by Neil Bell. Local company, Eat Theatre, has produced loads of great plays recently including Cathy Crabb's The Bubbler and Brian Gorman's New Dawn Fades – the story of Joy Division.

Stuck in a relationship, stuck in a city, The Lion In Love is about choices, temptations and opportunities. Shelagh Delaney wrote in the programme for the play's first staging in 1960...

"Most of us know what we want but how many of us recognise it when we get it? We can't choose the time and place into which we are born - maybe a restless city alive and dying in the same breath – and it can mean many different things to many different people but more often than not it can be like a terrible drug – you really want to get away from it and give it up but you can't. So you stay. Maybe reach a compromise with it or perhaps you fight a pitched battle with it all the days of your life..."

Delaney's thoughts about the metaphoric link between relationships and a city haven't aged in over fifty years.

Meanwhile, the play's title nods to Aesop's fable about the lion who was so in love with the daughter of a woodcutter he asked to marry her. The father, frightened that the lion would eat him if he refused, asked the beast to have his claws and teeth removed so that his daughter wouldn't be hurt `in the act of love'. The besotted lion agreed and, once he was rendered harmless, he was either killed or driven out of the area, depending on which version is read.

And the moral of the story in relation to the play? "Its title is taken from Aesop's fable warning of needless sacrifice for foolish love and explores the struggles of these everyday, imperfect people trying to make the most of their lives in an ever changing world..." states Eat Theatre.

Something to think about while watching this historic re-staging...

The Lion In Love by Eat Theatre
Wednesday 19th – Saturday 22nd November 7:30pm
Salford Arts Theatre £10/£6
Tickets on sale from the Salford Arts Theatre box
Office: 0161 925 0111 or www.salfordartstheatre.com

The Lion In Love Trivia...

• Those who auditioned for parts in the original stage version included Oliver Reed, Terence Stamp and Sean Connery. The final actors chosen were Kenneth Cope and Diana Coupland

• The music for the play was by Monty Norman – who went on to write the theme for James Bond

• The play largely got panned by critics when it was first staged and Delaney responded "I expected bad notices and those I have read, if they had been written about any other play, would make me want to dash out to go and see it..."

Loads more background to the play in John Harding's book Sweetly Sings Delaney (see previous Salford Star review – click here)

For details of other Shelagh Delaney Day events – click here

Salford Star full preview of Shelagh Delaney Day to follow...