A couple of years back, London was blessed with a fantastic Open Air Theatre production of Harold Brighouse’s Salford-set comedy classic ‘Hobson’s Choice’. It yanked the setting from the 1880s to the swinging ’60s – and in doing so pulled the politics of the writing forward a few extra decades on top of that.
This is not that production. This is ‘Hobson’s Choice’ done the old school way – accepting that there are points where star Martin Shaw’s turn as bilious shoe shop owner Henry Horatio Hobson is so luridly OTT that I half wondered if it was some sort of Dadaist experiment, or he was having a stroke.
The story revolves around pompous alcoholic Hobson, who alienates his ruthlessly efficient daughter Maggie… by being a bit of a dick, basically. After one transgression too far, she storms out and sets up a rival shoe shop, poaching hapless young boot-maker Willie Mossop as her business-slash-life partner for good measure.
The trouble with the play now is that gender politics that were fairly progressive when it premiered in 1916 – chiming with the women’s suffrage movement – feel at best unrevelatory a century on. At worst, the unloveable harshness of Naomi Frederick’s Maggie could be taken as acerbic comment on ‘women who want to have it all’. I don’t for a second think that’s the attitude of director Jonathan Church, but he’s brought nothing from the modern era to this creaky effort.
There’s an impressive set from Simon Higlett, the production’s heart is essentially in the right place, and Shaw is fun in a slightly weird way, but it feels like a museum piece.