Harold Brighouse's Hobson’s Choice Directed by Craig Walton

28 - 31 January 2009

Henry Horatio Hobson is a wealthy widower with three daughters, two of whom he will gladly marry off. But he considers the eldest, Maggie, being over 30, is well past it, and that she should remain at home and care for him.
His hand-made boot and show shop is a great local success, attracting wealthy patrons, around whom he flutters like an oily butterfly.
But the shop’s success is down to the skills of Willie Mossop, seemingly gormless, but brilliant when it comes down to making boots down in his dark cellar. All seems well for the overbearing Hobson who spends most his time boozing himself into oblivion in the nearby Moonrakers pub.

the determined Maggie has other plans - particularly regarding Willie. Recognising that he is the shop’s most prized asset she proposes they marry and go into business together.
At that point, love does not come into it as she sets about giving the amazed Willie a total makeover.

Harold Brighouse was born into a middle-class family, near Salford in Lancashire, the setting for his most popular play, Hobson's Choice. He obtained a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School, which he left aged seventeen, intending a career in the textile industry. He went to work for his father as an assistant buyer.
He became a prolific author of more than seventy plays, many of which are set in his native Lancashire and show in a comic way the attitudes and character of the working and trading people. He began by writing one-act plays, the first being produced at Miss Horniman's theatre in Manchester in 1909.

Later he took up residence in Mecklenburgh Square, London, and frequented theatrical first nights which were to equip him so ably for his more mature plays and their use of stagecraft.
Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Brighouse was declared unfit for combat, but joined the new flying force called the Royal Flying Corps, which in 1918 became the RAF, and was seconded to the Air Ministry Intelligence Staff, where in his spare time he also produced his most famous play.