My friend John went on my behalf to see the play and here is his very positive review below:-
Hobson’s Choice is currently in production at the Richmond Theatre (so catch it there before it transfers to the West End where it will be a hit and tickets will be both hard to come by and more expensive), demonstrates what live theatre can do that Film & TV can’t and why it remains a wonderful and crucial art form. Everything about this production, surely the most underrated comedy in the language, is so wonderful that it is difficult to know where to start.
How about the set? Not the most obvious place to start a review but for my money Simon Higlett’s set design is worth the ticket price alone. A revolving circular floor enables him to present both the back and the front of Hobson’s boot makers shop and the cellar where Maggie & William set up as rival boot makers. The sets evoke Victorian Manchester so powerfully that one is transported back in time. This marvellous set conjures up all sorts of wonderful possibilities. For example in the opening scene Willie Mossop is called up to the shop and he emerges from under the shop counter in a way that visually illustrates his lowly and inferior position in the social hierarchy without the need for words, he is literally “below”. Or take the scene where the drunken patriarch Henry Horatio Hobson staggers back to his shop from the pub and attempts to open his shop door and every time he does so the door moves because it is revolving for a set change, not only a brilliant and funny piece of stage business but seamlessly integrated into the play. I said the theatre can do things Film and TV can’t, well Hobson’s Choice even has the wonderful smell of bacon as it is cooked on stage. Beat that.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Hobson’s Choice, written in 1915 by Harold Brighouse, is Naomi Frederick’s vivid portrayal of the powerful and wonderfully decisive New Woman Maggie Hobson, who is the directing mind and conductor of the rest of the characters in this uplifting comedy. In a breath-taking role reversal it is Maggie who takes the lead and proposes to the timid William. Imperiously she informs her husband to be “William You’re My Man!” A cross between Miss Jean Brodie and Margaret Thatcher she is wonderfully bracing, funny and utterly irresistible. She drives the play with her energy and no nonsense good sense. Maggie Hobson prefigures Nicola Horlick and Deborah Meadan.
The plot of Hobson’s Choice is a clever adaptation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” in which Henry Horatio Hobson, wonderfully played by Martin Shaw, is outwitted by his three daughters Alice, Vickey & Maggie. But whereas Lear rages on the heath, Henry holds forth from the top of the stairs in a wonderfully comic pastiche. Martin Shaw excels in this scene as he mixes Lear & Falstaff into a tragi-comic tour de force which brings the house down. Simply brilliant. The final scene of the play tells us what Hobson’s Choice actually is: he can drink himself to death or accept William as his business partner. This, being a comedy, he chooses the latter. In 2016 we have tensions between the asset rich over 50s and the under 30’s unable to buy a home. Maybe Hobson’s Choice has lessons for us all on this score?
A play and a production which I’m convinced will become a West End hit so get over to Richmond and see it while you still can before tourists buy all the tickets and the touts cotton on to this gem of the English comic repertoire.
