That’s what great theatre should do. Take you outside of yourself. Provide you meaning. Make your reconsider things. As excellent as the National Theatre’s new adaptation of the seminal drama is, no doubt its an impact that was felt far more keenly back in the 1950s and 1960s. After all, A Taste of Honey features a single mother, an unwed pregnant girl, a gay best friend, and a black sailor. Racy stuff indeed.

Bijan Sheibani’s production for the National Theatre was first produced at the Lyttelton Theatre in 2014 and is designed by Hildegard Bechtler with sound design from Ian Dickinson, composition from Benjamin Kwasi Burrell, lighting design by Paul Anderson and movement from Aline David. It’s currently on tour around the UK – and stopped off at Canterbury’s The Marlowe Theatre.

Jazz oozes out of the stage, smokily set. Helen (played by Jodie Prenger) enjoys her alcohol that ‘consoles from life’ as she tries to muddle through a life that hasn’t been fair to her and her daughter Jo (Gemma Dobson). She has ‘wear and tear on her soul’ and finds solace in the bottle and with men, and warns Jo that it’s ‘work or want in your future.’ She might seem to throw herself at any man who comes to the door, seeking marriage, but that’s all that was out there for women of her generation. Jo’s pregnancy puts her in a difficult situation as an unmarried woman, but the baby makes her feel important.

The prose is sparky and witty, and there are some great one liners. We’re invited into the moody living room of the women, although the large stage doesn’t convey the claustrophobia of the living situation . The songs from a three piece jazz band are well placed, and add to the rhythm of the play, punctuating it perfectly.

It might have been the eve of the time when everything changed alongside Larkin, Lady Chatterley, and The Beatles, but this was no liberal society. Yet Delaney aimed to make socially inclusive theatre that challenged boundaries.

Perhaps the reason that this show, as good as it was, didn’t hit home very hard is because we are far more liberal than back in the 1950s – even in today’s shadow of intolerances. The punchy impact that would have been seen on that stage at The Theatre Royal, Stratford, in 1958, just can’t resonate in the same way in 2019.

That’s not to take away from what Delaney did. She created a powerful piece of theatre at a time when the boys’ club still ruled, working class women didn’t have a voice, and gritty life in Salford didn’t belong on the stage. A Taste of Honey changed the theatre landscape. And for that reason it deserves to be seen, decades later.

So begins a new play St George and the Dragon, by Rory Mullarkey, now running at London’s National Theatre. Changing identity, hero worship and myth making are the big themes tackled by this play. Loosely inspired by Evgeny Schwartz’s 1943 play The Dragon, a satire on the Soviet Union, the subject is now switched to England and misplaced pride in an idea of national power and prowess.

Trussed up in armour made of kitchen apparatus, our hero might be able to slay the physical dragon, but will he be able to halt the metaphorical dragon that is contained within society?

The setting moves from the early medieval days of St George’s home through to the chugging chimneys of Victorian Britain to today’s high rise buildings, and the themes of national pride stay consistent yet misplaced. A real fire breathing dragon morphs into something present in systems of productivity and efficiency, citizens worshipping at the altar of apparent progress. What was once a mythic beast becomes a ‘foul system of statutes and laws, instruments of power.’

We recognise the endless cycle of hope and despair that football offers us, and of course know how the entertainment offered by GameBoys and MegaBowls never replaces the hole that a lack of true identity offers. That drive for more and more doesn’t always leave us feeling satisfied. A dream of future progress often sees us yearning for a past where the sun always filled the sky and the fields were always green – a past which never existed.

John Hefferman as George is naïve yet compelling, and Richard Goulding as Henry, the dragon’s sidekick, convincingly complex. The set is neat, and song filled changes between acts charming.

The first half is a neat and witty allegory, but the charm and fun is lost in the final act. Whilst the question of what counts as progress runs as a continual thread throughout, the means through which the message is delivered becomes less entertaining as the play goes on. Stylistically the play has echoes of Monty Python and Blackadder, yet its length means that the humour it contains sometimes wears thin. It’s telling that my friend was ready to leave after the second act, not realising that this was just the interval.

The themes that Saint George And The Dragon addresses are important ones. The National Theatre could have taken a few more risks with their production to make their exploration as powerful as it has the potential to be.

We find ourselves amongst Colin (Nick Holder) caring for his ailing elderly mother, Barbara (Anna Calder-Marshall), the unemployed Dean (Luke Clarke) desperately trying find a home for his pregnant partner Emma (Janet Eluk) and two children from a previous relationship, Jason (Vitaly Outkine) and Paige (Grace Doherty). More transient characters, perhaps a point about their migrant status,  are Somali woman Tharwa (Hind Swareldahab) and Syrian Adnan (Ammar Haj Ahmad), who light up when they discover that they speak the same language.

They are strangers forced to share their lives together in claustrophobic apparently temporary accommodation. The set by Natasha Jenkins is stark and bare, seats on the stage and fluorescent lighting keeping nothing a secret, breaking down boundaries between audience and cast in the same way as between characters.

Colin may be initially unlikeable, but as we see his unconditional love for his invalid mother, extending to her toilet duties, we become warm and broken hearted. Washing her hair at the communal sink with fairy liquid is one of only many tender moments between the two. The familiar protest of getting up in the morning and family merriment, rehearsing for a nativity play and football practice, thinking of a Happy Meal – these every days moments all become something to marvel at given the situation we see.

‘I feel like a little girl sometimes’ says an invalid Barbara to young child Paige, who she builds a strained relationship with. For so many through no fault of their own, be it war, unemployment, illness or any of the struggles we face in life, things don’t turn out the way dreamed of us a child.

Through overheard phone calls to council offices and failed meetings we learn the cyclical nature of benefits, housing, sanctions and punishments and the very real pressures they cause on relationships and situations. Dean and Emma struggle to explain to their children just why they are sharing a pack of microwave rice between four, and when Barbara says to Colin that his life will be much better when she has died and removed herself as a burden, he can’t disagree, as much as he loves her. It all feels futile and intense, and painful to watch and imagine those for whom this is a reality. This isn’t poverty porn, and neither is it social commentary. Instead Zelkin has created an honest portrayal of the lives of many caught in the poverty trap, restrictive and destructive.

Mesmerising in its mundane details, powerful in its psychological power, it was created through a collaborative devising process with an ensemble of actors, all based on real occurrences. Choosing to run at just over 90 minutes with no interval was a smart move, as it intensifies the emotional potency.

As Barbara makes her way from the stage through the crowd to what we assume to be a bewildered ending, the audience is on the edge of tears. A few seconds later as the play ends, they are on their feet, in a unanimous standing ovation. Raving about a performance of a situation that should not exist. The next question is whether LOVE has raised enough emotion within us to do something about it. That truly is LOVE.

LOVE is running until January 10th 2017