SHELAGH Delaney’s epic Northern odyssey was unleashed at the dawn of the 1960s and arguably fired the starting pistol for what was to follow.

Shock horror indeed… inter-racial sex before marriage, babies born out of wedlock, drunken behaviour, fecklessness, homophobia. You name it.

Yes, this was the reality of certain areas of working class existence, or so we are reliably informed.

Back then, the sound of retired colonels’ monocles shattering in a thousand drawing rooms across Britain must have been truly deafening.

In fact, everything was thrown in, which is why I suppose this form of drama became known as ‘kitchen sink’.

There is no doubt that at the time, it was truly shocking. But more than half a century later, the question has to be asked – does this play travel?

Sadly, the answer is no. Basically, half the problem lies with Mark Babych’s direction and the rest with Hull Truck Theatre’s trademark obsession with milking every predictable proletarian cliché in whatever production they attempt.

For a start, why on earth does everyone shout their heads off in a Hull Truck performance? Julie Riley as the man-mad, whisky-sodden mother bawls constantly, as does Rebecca Ryan in the role of Jo, the emotionally abused daughter who can’t wait to get the hell out of there.

At times, they each become Coronation Street Hilda Ogden clones, both trying to out-screech each other in what is supposed to be cutting edge portrayals of the Northern nitty-gritty.

And there is no let-up in the racket, either, because these characters seem to work in shifts. When the women aren’t yelling away, we have wall-to-wall noise from James Weaver as the completely implausible Peter, a bizarre blend of Boycie out of Only Fools and Horses and George Formby on acid.

Elsewhere, Lekan Lawal’s notion of what it takes to be the sailor lover boy with a girl in every port also hits the seabed like a lead anchor. There is absolutely no chemistry here, none of the intoxicated tenderness of first love… star crossed they most surely are not.

And why didn’t we explore the reasons why Jo shacks up with Geoff, played with cautious campness by Christopher Hancock? Where is the sense of loss after the father of her unborn child sails away into the sunset, probably never to return?

The problem with this is that one gets the feeling that Delaney was so preoccupied with shocking everyone that she was – like Hull Truck – more concerned with the polemic rather than the finer detail.

The truth is that this is really a theatrical museum piece, a caricature, rather than a work with contemporary relevance. Even the music – a strangely mutated skiffle hybrid – abysmally fails to capture the essence of the times it purports to represent.

A Taste of Honey runs until Saturday (June 21).