A familiar comedy

Hobson's Choice is a gentle 'Lancashire comedy' set in a Salford boot shop in 1880. People say things like: 'I'm fair moithered, my lass,' and: 'There's nobbut tea to drink.' People talk plain sense, and make-do and mend.

I ask director Richard Jones how his version, opening at the Young Vic tomorrow, has been updated. 'It's set in a sex shop in Amsterdam. And all the actors are in large flower pots.' He laughs, and it sounds like a revolver firing. 'Maybe you should print that. It'll let me off the hook when people actually come to see it!'

So, for the record, it's not in an absurdist Dutch sex den. Instead, writer Tanika Gupta has updated the setting to the modern-day Asian community of Salford. Harry Hobson is now Hari Hobson, Willie Mossop is Ali Mossop, and Maggie becomes Durga. Instead of boots, Hobson produces saris. And there's a little demotic salt-and-peppering, too - lines such as 'The scheming hussy!' become 'The dark-skinned slag!'.

Despite the alterations, Gupta has remained very faithful to the original and kept the plot intact. It's still very much about a hard-headed daughter battling with her domineering father, and winning. It's just that it's no longer Victorian values that give Hobson his overbearing selfimportance, but an oldfashioned Bengali sense of patriarchy.

Jones was last seen at the Young Vic directing Six Characters In Search Of An Author, but is perhaps best known in the UK as an opera director. His brilliant Ring Cycle was one of the most controversial productions of the last decade at the Royal Opera, his ENO stagings include a dreamily beautiful Pellèas et Mèlisande and The Trojans.

I ask him how much research he did for Hobson. 'You mean because I'm not Asian?' he asks. 'I went to Rusholme near Manchester to look round, because the area still has Asian tailors.' And did the trip bear fruit? 'Yes, the set looks like a real salwar kameez shop. But, fundamentally, I approach the work as a brilliantly made play.'

But, surely, the comedy is too broad, the situations too exaggerated to call it brilliant? Ali Mossop, for example, goes from being a downtrodden worm into a model of self-confidence in barely the blink of an eye. Jones responds with an illuminating insight. 'But it's a fairy tale, isn't it? There's an ogre - that's the father, Hari. Ali has to undergo several trials to win his girl - that's a sort of Pygmalion theme. And there are even ugly sisters, who, in this case, happen to be beautiful.'

It's an attractive way to see the piece, and it makes sense. But does it mean there have been problems marrying the reality of the shop with a fairy tale? 'Yes, there's a problem of tone, definitely. There's a sort of vaudevillian quality you can't evade; a lot of jokes that end up with a "boom-BOOM!" I've tried to solve it with theatrical virtuosity but it's up to other people to say whether it works.'

Are there any connections between directing for the lyric and the spoken stage? 'Not really,' says Jones. 'But there are some directors who bring a musical quality, perhaps in tempo.' And the differences? 'In opera, you work with a conductor - someone else is driving the car. The more you are experienced, the more you safeguard the solidity of that relationship.'

He adds: 'There are fewer great operas than great plays, so these works tend to become like precious hot-house plants. People walk around them in different ways, and some try to tell you that their view is definitive. But that throttles theatre - theatre should be disposable, not definitive.'