STAGE REVIEWS : A MIXED ‘CHOICE’ AT COLONY THEATRE

Harold Brighouse’s “Hobson’s Choice” validates the power of a good story.

This artfully crafted comedy about a Lancashire boot maker and his daughters endures for the best of reasons: because it’s so much fun to see the members of the Hobson household--Maggie Hobson and her father in particular--throw down the gauntlet at life and at each other with a defiance ultimately rewarded by the vindication of almost everyone concerned.

Being true to yourself pays off is the heartening message, and Brighouse has a smashing good time putting it across.

The Colony Theatre production that opened over the weekend has almost as good a time, but not always for the right reasons. What we relish is watching the gutsy Maggie, dismissed by her chauvinist father as an efficient old maid good for running his shop and doing his bidding, gently yet firmly turn the tables on him.

As systematically as if she were going down a laundry list, Maggie sets about marrying her father’s best cobbler, establishes her own shop, makes a man (instead of a nebbish) of her man, Will Mossop, helps her simpering sisters nab the husbands they want and, ultimately, reaps a triumphant reunification with a much mitigated parent.

Can any victory be greater?

Only if the production could make it so. At the Colony, “Hobson’s Choice” is both overstated and underdone--long on caricature, short on detail. (A kerosene lamp in Act II, for instance, is carefully lit and pointedly extinguished--empty gestures both, since no flame appears. A one-time slip? Perhaps, but glaring when combined with other indulgences.)

Director Andy Griggs either neglected to restrain his actors (the weaker ones, especially) or encouraged them to make up for their shortcomings by going overboard. Either way, the excesses undermine the tautness of this comic piece, turning it into shapeless slapstick precisely when it needs most to be a carefully waged war of subtleties.

Suzanne Celeste’s sterling Maggie--exact, determined, unflappable and appealing; a mistress of positive inference and perfect timing--is supported only fitfully by an uneven cast.

It ranges from the raw awkwardness of Ben Tyler, miscast as family friend Jim Heeler, to the careless winsomeness of Dan Lench as innocent Will Mossop. Lench has the potential to be Celeste’s match if his sense of the role were more assured, but at crucial moments his boyish spontaneity becomes infected with the same need to overdo that grips so many in this company.

None more so than Keith Mills’ Henry Horatio Hobson, the pater familias who’d rather be at the pub than at the shop. An alcoholic decline is pivotal to the role (as Charles Laughton masterfully demonstrated in the 1954 movie), yet Mills breezes so jauntily through the play, healthy as a cherub without a care in the world, that his “accident” in the second half seems unlikely and his failing health in the final scene is entirely too sudden to be credible.

Nanci Feldman and Theresa Bailey flatten their performances as Maggie’s sisters by not really believing them. So do Pablo Coates and Allen Fox as their paramours, and, to a lesser degree, Don Woodruff as the shop foreman, Tubby. They would do well to emulate Jon Palmer who, in a brief scene as the principled Dr. McFarlane, averts an easy caricature by keeping on a steady track of sheer conviction.

To her credit, Sandra Kinder plays the haughty Mrs. Hepworth without unwarranted condescension, and Stephanie Lani Truitt’s Ada Figgins, the country bumpkin Will Mossop almost marries, remains within the bounds of allowable ham. Ham, in her case, is true to the author’s intent.

Production values are acceptable if not exciting, from John Thomas Clark’s inventive yet simple sets to Laura Deremer’s range of turn-of-the-century costumes. Lighting and sound design by Dorisa Boggs and Zeppo Goldenberg, respectively, are adequate.

“Hobson’s Choice” at 1944 Riverside Drive (behind Dodger Stadium) runs Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays 7 p.m., until Nov. 21. After Oct. 11 it plays in repertory with Alan Bennett’s “Habeas Corpus.” (213) 665-3011.