Harold Brighouse's vintage comedy, HOBSON’S CHOICE, is what is known as a “crowd pleaser”. A big, warm, family comedy set in picturesque Edwardian Lancashire and featuring vivid characters that mostly turn out to have hearts of gold.Hobson owns a boot shop, staffed by various unpaid members of his family including daughter Maggie who everyone assumes is too old to find a husband. But Maggie decides she’ll wed the unlikely figure of meek, shoemaker Willy Mossop and the comedy derives from her attempts to get her sister's a dowry and the husbands they desire too.
The colloquial expression "a Hobson's choice" (which pre-dates the play) has come to mean having no choice at all and that's what happens to the beleaguered father faced with what he describes as “uppity daughters” and Maggie and Willy's successful, rival business. Like King Lear he's forced to ask each of his three daughters to take care of him in his alcoholic old age.
There's no denying the poignancy of the final moments but for the most part this is a sprightly romantic comedy about the generation gap and women taking control of indecisive men.
TV actor and West End favourite Martin Shaw stars as the title character in this transfer from the Theatre Royal Bath, following a brief tour. Naomi Frederick and Bryan Dick also reprise their roles as Maggie and Willy.
Frederick strikes just the right balance between bossy and well meaning. Maggie can easily seem shrewish but it's clear, in this performance, how much she loves her family even when she despairs of her bullying parent and increasingly snobbish sisters. Dick is very funny in his bewilderment at events spinning out of control but his version of Willy Mossop is no fool. Underneath the hen pecked befuddlement there's a brain at work waiting for the right moments to stand up for himself for everyone's benefit.
For such a handsome actor, Martin Shaw demonstrates an admirable lack of vanity, making the tiresome old patriarch a crumpled combination of beer belly and ruddy face. It's not difficult to feel sorry for him when the tables are turned and the bully becomes the bullied.
It's directed at a sprightly pace by Jonathan Church on a very handsome set by Simon Higlett suggesting all the pretension of a market town shopping emporium at the end of the nineteenth century, enticingly combining wood, leather and towering shelves of shoe boxes.
This play isn't going to rock your world but if you're looking for a light, funny summer comedy this is the show for you. A perfect West End Treat for your parents or grandparents.
Arguably one of the most important pieces of music of the nineteenth century (harmony was never the same again), Wagner’s Tristan And Isolde makes demands on all involved in it, including the audience. There is hardly any physical action on stage, making it a director’s nightmare, the singers are required to have massive vocal and dynamic range as well as the stamina of a long distance runner and the orchestral forces required are huge. And it’s over five hours long. Oh, and Wagner demanded that an entirely new instrument be invented for its performance – a wooden trumpet (ENO has managed to lay its hands on one for this production, and it’s a surprisingly effective thing).