TV REVIEWS : Bintley’s Ballet of ‘Hobson’s Choice’ a Study in Recycled Classicism

With its nostalgic look at family and class conflicts of the 1880s, Harold Brighouse’s vintage British comedy “Hobson’s Choice” ought to make a charming one-act ballet.

Padded to a relentlessly antic 100 minutes, however, the David Bintley version for Birmingham Royal Ballet (formerly Sadler’s Wells) looks awfully thin despite the vibrant 1990 studio performance scheduled to be shown today at 4 p.m. on Bravo cable.

Some British balletomanes consider Bintley the successor to the late Sir Frederick Ashton, but you can’t prove it from the hand-me-down music hall capers and recycled classicism on view here.

Paul Reade’s score borrows shamelessly from period sources but stitches them into an appealing patchwork of new and old. Tom Gutteridge’s direction captures the dancing resourcefully, fluidly linking the ballet’s three acts and adding special effects as well.

Unfortunately, Bintley manages to undercut everyone’s best efforts with confused dance depictions of the leading characters. Take Hobson (Desmond Kelly), the domestic tyrant who eventually gets his comeuppance.

Bintley gives him one nasty sequence in which he lashes his eldest daughter’s fiance across the face with a leather belt.

Otherwise, however, we get affectionate drunk scenes a la Stanley Holloway as Alfred P. Doolittle, with even Hobson’s D.T. played for cheap laughs. As a result, his rebellious daughter Maggie (Karen Donovan) seems too hard-edged and manipulative for her plight.

Bintley creates some splendid opportunities for dances--including a scene with shoemaker Will Mossop (Michael O’Hare) trying on various kinds of footwear and letting them inspire his movement. However, the choreography itself looks barely sketched in, often revealing a condescending attitude toward the working class that further weakens the narrative.

The mock-prim Salvation Army divertissement is another good idea that fails choreographically, but it confirms the Birmingham company’s technical skill and sense of style.

In a nifty programming gambit, Bravo will also telecast the 1953 David Lean film of “Hobson’s Choice” starting Feb. 12.