HOBSON'S CHOICE. To 1 September.
Chichester
HOBSON’S CHOICE
by Harold Brighouse.
Chichester Festival Theatre In rep to 1 September 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 16, 18, 22, 30 Aug, 1 Sept 2pm.
Audio-described 18 Aug 2pm, 24 Aug.
BSL Signed 30 Aug 7.30pm.
TICKETS: 01243 781312.
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 August.
Production that’s an uneasy fit with the play.
“British, middle-class and proud of it.” Not the manifesto of Chichester’s audience, but the self-defining statement of Harold Brighouse’s late-Victorian shopkeeper Hobson, whose three daughters keep his shop while he’s out drinking, and who gets his come-uppence during the play.
Hobson has over-much self-confidence; his apprentice Willy Mossop has to acquire some from the source of strength common in Brighouse plays: a loving woman. Maggie Hobson, sidelined by her father, takes him in hand, and by the ear, teaching him to assert himself and prosper in thrifty, hard-working Victorian style.
Jonathan Church’s production plays against a fine set from Simon Higlett, placing the realistic settings for Hobson’s shop and Willy and Maggie’s humbler basement in front of a late Victorian urbanscape. Yet this never becomes the production it should have been.
John Savident’s Hobson provides some visually humorous moments. On his way to the Moonraker’s Arms during working-hours, his hat sits uncomfortably atop his head, just as he’s about to discover how unsettled his own life is. Later, he approaches a slice of his daughter’s wedding-cake as if it’s a lump of coal then swills a spot of tea round his mouth as if to clear a nasty taste.
But he speaks Hobson’s lines like a careless quarryman delivering blocks of stone without care for size or shape. Lumps of words are set-down, often in tones of generalised anger, and sentences split-up to no apparent purpose.
This makes it hard for Caroline Backhouse’s Maggie to parry her father, and the only part of the production where Church moves beyond treating the play like a son-of-Charley’s Aunt rather than the carefully-drawn piece it is, occurs at the end of act three, where Willy fearfully tries to avoid bedtime with his new wife. Even here, Dylan Charles tries for laughs through farcical business. But Backhouse’s return with nightdress and candle finds room for a sense of affection and understanding before she leads him off by the ear.
If only such detail and humanity pervaded the rest of the play, this would have been a choice Hobson instead of a mildly amusing one.
Alice Hobson: Katherine Kingsley.
Vickey Hobson: Annabel Scholey.
Maggie Hobson: Carolyn Backhouse.
Albert Prossor: Alex Waldmann.
Henry Horatio Hobson: John Savident.
Mrs Hepworth: Judith Paris.
Tubby Wadlow: Richard Kane.
William Mossop: Dylan Charles.
Jim Heeler: John Branwell.
Ada Figgins: Lizzie Winkler.
Fred Beenstock: Philip Correia.
Dr MacFarlane: Alistair Findley.
Director: Jonathan Church.
Designer: Simon Higlett.
Lighting: Mark Jonathan.
Sound: Mike Keniger.
Composer: Matthew Scott.
Vocal coach: William Conacher.
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson.
2007-08-13 06:44:42