Preview: Hobson's Choice, York Theatre Royal, March 29 to April 16

"LUXURY", says Berwick Kaler, as he defines the contrast between his multiple pantomime responsibilities and the single focus of the title role in Hobson's Choice at York Theatre Royal.

Dame Berwick is in the third week of rehearsals for his first Theatre Royal role outside of panto for 20 years, playing the cantankerous and bumptious shoe shop owner, Henry Horatio Hobson, in Harold Brighouse's vintage Lancashire comedy.

"I have to say it's been harder than I expected. I suppose what appealed to me was not having any responsibilities other than my part, and that's been a luxury," he says.

Berwick spends his winter days with David Leonard, Martin Barrass and Suzy Cooper trying to run rings around his long-suffering dame in the pantomime. The drunken and tyrannical Hobson would no doubt sympathise. "All he wants is to be obeyed, and yet no-one obeys him throughout the play from the moment he enters," says Berwick.

Whereas Berwick's dame gets her own back on each and every one of her assailants in panto, Hobson remains the butt of all the jokes in Hobson's Choice. His three daughters are giving him a headache, especially Maggie, the eldest, who humbles her father by marrying his chief bootmaker, Willie Mossop, and opening a rival shop

"I do feel for him because he's the one who's being trodden on. For his era, he's no different from anyone else: what a father did to assert his authority was take his belt off. No-one else's daughters are defying their father, only Hobson's," says Berwick.

"I think modern parents will empathise with him, I really do, if people really listen to this play, but because of his attitude and his cantankerousness he may not get sympathy. What spoils Hobson is his sense of self-importance."

So, Berwick, from where does the sympathy emerge? "It comes from the fact that all he wants to do is get over his hangover in the morning, come downstairs and walk through the shop on the way to the pub, leaving Maggie in charge, and all is wonderful until he sees his daughters in the fashions of the day and he realises he's losing control."

Aside from pantomime, Berwick has concentrated on television and radio work in recent years, but artistic Theatre Royal director Damian Cruden kept chipping away at him to do a repertory show until he said yes to doing Hobson's Choice. "He's been offering me a few things in the last few years, and I thought around Christmas time, 'I know what I'm going to be doing in the year ahead and there's this one slot open in March and April'. I could have chosen to do nothing but, apart from panto, I haven't been on stage for seven years since playing Eddie Waters in The Comedians in the London transfer to the Lyric from the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

"People can say you've done panto every year but it's not the same. I know I go on about my age he is 58 but I was beginning to wonder if I was copping out and being lazy. I thought that before I got to 60 I had to see if I could still do a role like this, and I think it's a role as tough as Shakespeare. I believe I can do it, but I might fall on my backside, so really it's about taking on that challenge."

Soon Berwick will turn his thoughts once more to pantomime, before he takes up his summer commitment filming his role in the second series of Distant Shores from early June to late October. Booking for The Lad Aladdin opens on April 1, and once Hobson's Choice is up and running from March 29, Berwick will focus on writing the script for his 27th York panto. "I've done half the synopsis already and I'll be writing morning till early afternoon," he says. "Calling it The Lad Aladdin suggests it might be a little different this year: well, we've had enough mucking around with the story, so we're going to give them a sumptuous pantomime this time!"

Hobson's Choice, York Theatre Royal, March 29 to April 16. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 16:15 Thursday, March 17, 2005