Classic northern comedy a little laugh-lustre

Hobson’s Choice, Oldham Coliseum, to May 10
THE co-production between the Coliseum, Bolton’s Octagon and Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic at last reaches Oldham — and it’s clear the pedestrian pace and odd casting reported when it launched in January weren’t simply the production getting up to speed.

Harold Brighouse’s glorious northern comedy — emphasis on the latter of those two words — has been a much-revived masterpiece for both professional and amateur companies for decades, a perfectly rounded tale of the rise of the low and the fall of the high.

The script is, of course, a trip down memory lane to when shops really knew about customer service and bootmakers knew their place. Brighouse builds in lots of humour, some quite natural, but some needing help.

Rarely is it presented as here, pretty much uncut in three acts and two intervals, and if David Thacker’s production is anything to go by, you can perhaps see why.

The much-acclaimed director appears to treat the play as drama rather than comedy, the actors chosen as much for their character skills as their comic flair.

Added to the slow overall pace, the result is a script that still produces many laughs, but laughs neither as strong nor as abundant as in other productions I have seen in recent years.

Coming closest to what most would think their ideal Brighouse character is Michael Shelford as Will Mossop, the bootmaker chosen for marriage by Maggie Hobson, whose intention it is to make him a successful businessman in 20 years.

Shelford carries an air of slack-jawed bewilderment that suits Mossop well — and Natalie Grady as Maggie carries the weight of the playwright’s go-getting businesswoman with tenacity.

The casting falls down a little with Hobson himself: the wiry Maxwell Hutcheon looks nothing like Brighouse’s well-rounded boozer, and plays

Hobson not as a self-important twit, but as an authoritarian, rather domineering father which makes the humour in his pronouncements that much harder to draw out.

In the final act he looks seriously ill — which might be true to the character, but isn’t conducive to laughing at him and his self-imposed predicament...

The set is a dull, thinly-spread affair that looks like it came from a local junk shop and large “leather” panels form a rather oppressive backdrop.

It’s funny, but it could be a lot funnier.