Hobson's Choice, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

A choice evening of comic charm

The Royal Exchange Theatre is at the very heart of posh St Ann's Square, where master cobbler Willie Mossop aspires to have his name emblazoned above his own high-class shoe shop. Yet it's taken a remarkably long time for the Exchange to get round to putting on Harold Brighouse's most successful and most often revived slice of late 19th-century Lancashire life, Hobson's Choice. Now, with some of the best casting that I've seen here for a while, with the right vehicle for Johanna Bryant's fancy frocks and period props, and with a big, warm-hearted interpretation by Braham Murray, it's been worth the wait.

Leaving the Young Vic to update the play next month, in a potentially fascinating way, to contemporary Salford's Asian community (where the widower Hari Hobson meets his match not in Maggie but in Durga), Murray immerses us in Brighouse's milieu, milking Hobson's suspect Victorian values for every last drop of wry Northern humour. In Trevor Peacock as Hobson, he has found the very epitome of domestic and national chauvinism "I'm a decent-minded man. I'm British middle class and proud of it. I stand for common sense and sincerity." Fawning over the wealthy clients who frequent the family business run by his elder daughter, and oblivious to the possibility of sharing any profits with the workers who created his wealth, this Hobson is a truly curmudgeonly master and father.

The enjoyment of the wit and breeze of Brighouse's writing is sometimes at the expense of the unsettling undercurrent of duplicity behind Hobson's refusal to help his daughters find happiness. The idea of marriage for his eldest, Maggie, is preposterous because at 30 she's over the hill, and letting the younger two prospect for themselves is out of the question because "you're not even fit to choose dresses for yourselves". All this because it's going to inconvenience him, personally, professionally and financially. It makes his comeuppance, heralded by the conquering hero music from Judas Maccabaeus, by his old bootmaker Willie Mossop all the more satisfying.

Joanna Riding, who recently won an Olivier Award for being taught in My Fair Lady, is the teacher here - clear-headed, bossy, yet not above being hurt at her father's none-too-subtle suggestion that she's a bit of an old boot. When she decides that her future lies in her own hands, and those of the skilled shoe-maker buried below stairs in her father's shop, she takes decisive action: "A Salford life's too near the bone to lose things for fear of speaking out."

Young Mossop doesn't know what's hit him. The actor-comedian John Thomson, every bit as endearingly bumbling as wide-eyed Willie as he was as podgy Pete in Cold Feet, gives an extremely well-judged performance. With the slightest physical gesture and merest facial expression he conveys disbelief, reluctance, panic, and finally acceptance of his fate at the hands of manipulative Maggie. The illiterate lad, son of a "workhouse brat" whom once Hobson wasn't afeared to beat, and whom his feisty daughter has dragged up by his boot straps (albeit in an improbably short space of time), turns man of substance with real relish.

Indomitable, indefatigable, and insistent that her ungracious sisters (Harri Earthy as the social-climbing Alice and Kirsten Parker as the indulged youngest, Vickey) should also make their own marriage plans, Maggie marches inexorably onwards. You have to have a sneaking admiration for her, although you wish that, for her own sake, she'd lighten up. You also have a smidgeon of sympathy for Hobson during his encounter with the surprisingly aggressive Alistair Cording as Dr MacFarlane (did Salfordians really hate the Scots so much?)

Peacock's performance throughout is extravagant, in the best sense of the word. His limbs twitch in his frustration, words escape him in the heat of the moment, bafflement turns to fury as he realises that he's scarcely his own master, far less anyone else's.

A good case needs no flattery, as Brighouse notes, but I wouldn't have missed this delightfully engaging production for anything.

To 28 June (0161-833 9833)