IN the programme notes, director Gregory Floy makes Harold Brighouse's classic play sound awfully serious with talk of alcoholism, feminism, chauvinism, snobbery, single parenting and the class struggle.

Those may be some of the themes but I'd rather go along with his other description of it as "a delightfully satisfying comedy", especially when delivered with such exquisite comic timing and sense of fun by the first-rate York cast.

The theatre's long-serving pantomime dame, Berwick Kaler, stars as Henry Hobson, a drunk and a tyrant who treats his three daughters like dirt, expecting them to run his shoemaker's shop out of duty not wages.

As the story opens, he's complaining about "the general increase in upishness" they're showing towards him. Little does he realise that eldest daughter Maggie is plotting a revolution that will see her marry timid bootmaker Willie Mossop, set up business on her own and blackmail Hobson into allowing his two other daughters to marry the men of their, not his, choice.

Kaler is taking his first serious part at the theatre for nearly 20 years, although no-one can doubt that he takes his role of dame very seriously too.

If he never seems quite harsh enough as Hobson, he does extract maximum laughs as Hobson faces a difficult choice. David Shelley matches him as Willie, who grows from shy and put-upon bootmaker into a confident husband and businessman, while Emma Gregory's no-nonsense Maggie displays an iron will that bends once she marries.

* Runs until April 16. Tickets (01904) 623568.

Published: 08/04/2005