HOBSON’S CHOICE

Bah gum, it’s a grand night out! With a lively burst of brass band music to herald each change of scene, John Savident – he of Coronation Street fame -heads a rollicking cast at Edinburgh’s King’s Theatre for the acclaimed Chichester Festival production of Hobson’s Choice.
In many ways this play, first produced in 1915, was the Coronation Street of its day, combining northern grit and wit with solid observation of place, character and class. The Rover’s Return is here the Moonrakers, a Salford hostelry frequented only too often by Henry Horatio Hobson, a bullying Victorian patriarch who to his own great misfortune has three “uppish” daughters. The eldest, Maggie (Carolyn Backhouse) is most uppish of all, and does not take kindly to being labelled as “30 and shelved”. She takes matters into her own hands and earmarks poor, shy, illiterate William Mossop, the best boot maker in her father’s employ, to be groomed for greatness and matrimony.

In many ways this play, set in 1880, is an amazing forecast of just how “uppish”women were to become. At a time when Father’s word was law, the playwright Harold Brighouse has burst the balloon of male domination and supremacy with his strong cast of capable women. These daughters brook no interference, whether in choice of clothes or husbands. By the end Hobson’s fortunes have declined - he has lost his best boot maker to Maggie after all - and he has allowed himself to degenerate into an alcoholic wreck.  Maggie has made a man out of Will, and successfully married off her sisters. Hobson now has no choice but to submit to Maggie’s plan to save him. She is the lynchpin of the action, gradually shifting the balance of power from father to daughter.

The class structure of the time is well represented by Simon Higlett’s first set, which underlines young working class Will’s lowly beginnings – he is literally located down below the shoe shop and allowed to pop up only when summoned. Dylan Charles gives a very able performance as the changing Will, from gauche, to bemused, to confident. There is also a good cameo performance from Alistair Findlay as the “foreign” Scottish doctor who takes no nonsense from the petulant Hobson. But the star, quite rightly, is John Savident. A good choice as Hobson.

King’s Theatre Tuesday 6^th – Saturday 10^th November 7.30pm. Wed & Sat 2.30pm