The Stage

Hobson’s Choice

Published Thursday 13 October 2005 at 17:10 by Pat Ashworth

This is a warm and tender ballet that just radiates with David Bintley’s mischievous sense of fun and his great love of British dance. The essentially northern quality of the story suits him too and the personalities he creates here are as flesh and blood as Harold Brighouse’s stage characters.

Robert Parker gives a wonderfully comic and expressive performance as Will Mossop. His virtuosity is apparent in movement that ranges from the bashful reticence of the clumsy young apprentice to the confident liberation of the married gentleman. He is excellently paired with guest artist, Isabel McMeekan, as Maggie. Petite and serious and buttoned-up at the start, she has some sublime lyrical moments in her wooing of Will.

One of the most memorable and evocative scenes is Sunday afternoon in Peel Park - an empty canvas of trees and bandstand that fills with whirling couples and cameos. The Salvation Army dance is an inspiration - prim, pious and demure at first and then catching the infectiousness of the rest, turning with a whirl of tambourines into something bigger and more exultant.

The ballet owes much to the techniques of silent film. Comedy can swiftly melt into beauty and tenderness, as it does when some hilarious mock-piano playing dissolves into Lily of Laguna and an exquisite love dance. There are masterly performances all round and especially from David Morse as the drunken Henry Hobson and Silvia Jimenez and Carol-Anne Millar as Maggie’s sisters. Hayden Griffin’s designs are pure Salford. It sends you out with a sigh of happiness.