Hobson’s Choice (Young Vic)

Hobson’s Choice was written in 1915, but has rarely been out of fashion. Tanika Gupta‘s new version has transplanted the action to a modern Salford, and the Hobsons are now an Indian family, working hard on their tailoring business (rather than the original bootmakers).

Director Richard Jones, tries hard to thoroughly modernise the piece.
Every gimmick is brought into play, from the tailoring pattern programme to the bilingual wedding invites. He even gets the entire audience trooping over to a local church hall for the second act to recreate the wedding reception, complete with Indian sweets.

But these are cosmetic touches. The trouble with this production is that Gupta’s version is not different enough. The parallels between Brighouse’s Victorian patriarch and her Asian paterfamilias are striking, but all too often the new text appears to have been bolted on the old version, with a few minor changes. The dialogue seems somewhat stilted as a result.

There are times when it looks like Gupta is about to take some risks with the text: Hobson sounds off about phoney asylum seekers, and there a few comments about Muslims working for a Hindu business – areas that might have been worth exploring. There is little comment too about his two youngest daughters taking white husbands – almost as if religion and race are just that too edgy to take risks with.

This version depends rather too much on a single joke – that Hobson is, “English middle-class and proud of it”. Today’s audiences have seen Goodness Gracious Me and the idea of an Indian living the life of a snobbish English gent is not as radical as it would have been ten years ago.

A considerable plus is Yasmin Wilde‘s Durga (as the Maggie character has been renamed). Feisty, strong and with just the right touch of sexiness – this is a knowing portrayal of the modern businesswoman. But Richard Sumitro‘s Ali Mossop is good too, a believable transformation from the shy immigrant with tailoring genius in this hands to the smooth young businessman.

As Hari Hobson himself, Paul Bhattacharjee with his arthritic lope and permanent expression of disgust, presents a fine caricature of the outraged father. But this Hobson thinks that his authority comes from position as head of the household rather from the fact that he’s the one with the brains and shrewdness. One wonders how he’d managed to build up a successful business over the last 20 years.

One thing that was sad was the paucity of Asians in the audience, it’s a pity that the Young Vic audience was still overwhelmingly white. Perhaps it should have been really radical and taken the play to Tooting or Wembley.

– Maxwell Cooter