In 1964, during the National Theatre's first season, John Dexter transformed Harold Brighouse's play from an old rep potboiler into a classic of Mancunian realism. But, although Jonathan Church's revival makes for an amiable night out, it never recovers the shock value of a play that in 1915 recorded a historic shift in the balance of power, from parents to children, and men to women.
This production is built around John Savident as the blustering patriarch, Henry Horatio Hobson, who cedes authority to his daughter, Maggie, and former boothand, Willie Mossop. Fresh from a long stint in Coronation Street, Savident has no problem creating an imposing figure defined by Lancastrian vowels as well rounded as his pocket-watch. He also crumbles plausibly into an alcoholic wreck dependent on Maggie and his ex-employee for his salvation. The details are all there, down to a last defiant twitch of the shoulders, but this seems only a sketch of the performance Savident will give once he is totally on top of the text.
For the rest, Carolyn Backhouse is a firm, unsentimental Maggie, though I feel that the moment when she takes Willie to the marriage bed should be authoritative rather than playful. Dylan Charles neatly captures Willie's growth from nervous artisan to independent bootmaker, and there is good support from Richard Kane as Hobson's staunchest employee and from Alistair Findlay as a commonsensical Scottish doctor.
But the play here simply emerges as a work of mild period charm. Given that Chichester has already recently revived Hobson's Choice, I wished they had resurrected one of Brighouse's 14 other full-length plays, or even a shorter piece such as The Game, in which a brilliant footballer is revealed to be under his mother's thumb. That really might cause a stir in our age of pampered, dribbling prima donnas.
· Until September 1. Box office: 01243 781312.
