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Spectator
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Provocative, verbose and humourless: Mrs Warren's Profession reviewed
George Bernard Shaw's provocative play Mrs Warren's Profession examines the moral hypocrisy of the moneyed classes. It opens with a brilliant young graduate, Vivie Warren, boasting about her dazzling achievements as a mathematician at Newnham College, Cambridge. She explains her future plans to a pair of mild-mannered chaps who clearly adore her. Like most of Shaw's characters, Vivie is hard-nosed, emotionally cold, incapable of speaking concisely and boundlessly self-confident. Quite irritating, in other words. She plans to start a firm with another hyper-brainy female and to make a killing in the London insurance market. This occurs in 1902. Was it normal for two unmarried Edwardian women to enter the world of high finance straight out of university? Hard to say. But for Shaw it seems feasible, so we accept it. However, Vivie's life is about to be thrown into disarray. Enter Mrs Warren, her redoubtable mother, played by Imelda Staunton. Kitty Warren speaks and thinks exactly like her daughter but she affects a more luxurious personal style. Her ash-blonde hair is piled high on her head and she's magnificently robed in a costly ball gown accented with necklaces and other pieces of finery. She looks like the tsarina being led to her execution by the Bolsheviks. But her accent carries inflections of a rough past. We learn that Kitty rose from the gutter to become a wealthy businesswoman and the details of her past are slowly revealed during Act One. She began as a barmaid at Waterloo Station where she earned four shillings (£20 today) a week. Then she was spotted by a female relative who worked as a courtesan and recruited Kitty to the business.
Boston Globe
03-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
In 2025, the scandal at the center of ‘Mrs. Warren's Profession' lands differently
David R. Gammons's spare set is dominated by an oversized conference room table beneath a screen with mysterious flashing numbers and charts. The whole thing suggests an awkward marriage of the intellectual compartmentalization of the characters from ' Advertisement Within the sterile boardroom environment, we meet Vivie Warren (Luz Lopez), a no-nonsense, independent young woman fresh out of university, who prefers actuarial accounting to concerts and museums. Now that Vivie has graduated from the best schools money can buy and is of marriageable age, her mother Kitty Warren (Melinda Lopez), who kept her distance and the nature of her business a secret, decides it's time for a closer mother-daughter relationship. While condemning a society that condones poverty while denying economic opportunity and flouting a double standard for women, the true heartbreak within 'Mrs. Warren's Profession' comes from the fracturing mother-daughter relationship at its heart. It's a breakdown spurred by their conflicting views on how to earn a living without 'wearing out your health and appearance for other people's profit.' Advertisement The play's emotional strength emerges from the sparks that fly between these two ambitious, independent women and the gap between the assumptions and expectations parents and children often have for themselves and each other. When Vivie learns that the money that bought her education was earned through prostitution, she expresses shock and moral outrage. Her mother's impassioned defense is based on the choices available to women. Vivie is won over, until she learns her mother continues to operate her profitable network of brothels, at which point she disowns her mother, determined to make her way in the world without her. Nael Nacer and Wesley Savick. Nile Scott Studios Four men orbit this mother/daughter sparring match, representing aspects of the transactional world these women must navigate. They include Kitty's friend and confidante Praed (a dapper and dashing Nael Nacer), who makes a case for the artistic life; Sir George Crofts (an appropriately slimy Barlow Adamson), Kitty's business partner, for whom everything is a business deal, including an offer of marriage to Vivie; Frank Gardner (Evan Taylor), a shallow young bounder and Vivie's love interest, who sees her as his meal ticket; and Reverend Samuel Gardner (Wesley Savick), Frank's father and one of Kitty's former clients, who hides his profligate past behind the sanctimony of the church. Tucker earned an award-winning reputation for visceral co-productions between his New York-based theater company Bedlam and Central Square Theater, including 'St. Joan,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'What You Will,' ' Advertisement While the actors do clamber through an open window and sprawl around on the conference table, Tucker's approach tends to obscure, rather than reveal the essence of this play. That table also creates an uncomfortable distance between the characters, so that we never get close enough to see the cracks beneath Kitty's veneer of a successful businesswoman, or get past Vivie's arrogance. Each member of this company has moments when they shine, although oddly, it's the men who stand out – Nacer's suave and loyal friend; Adamson's rage at having his business deal rejected; Taylor's gold-digging eye on whoever can cover his bills; and Savick's blundering reverend, undone by the knowledge that Vivie may or may not be his daughter. But these singular moments never quite gel, and this production moves in fits and starts rather than the dynamic, fast-paced approach Tucker is known for. While it's true Shaw was eager to poke society in the eye with his strident messages – 'Mrs. Warren's Profession' was published as one of his trio of 'Plays Unpleasant' – if we don't have the opportunity to feel the tug of conflicting allegiances to this mother and daughter, we don't see the emotional price these women must pay, and we're left only with Shaw's polemic. MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION Play by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Eric Tucker, Bedlam, presented by Central Square Theatre through June 29. Tickets: $27-$103. 617-576-9278 x1,
Time Out
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Mrs Warren's Profession
For a script penned in 1893, Mrs Warren's Profession still feels remarkably fresh. Absence has probably made the heart grow fonder when it comes to George Bernard Shaw's problem play. From the very beginning, it's had a fraught staging history. In Victorian England there was general social outcry over its subject matter, and you can understand why: its attitude towards sex work as a functioning product of the capitalist labour market feels bracingly current even today. Yet upon first glance, director Dominic Cooke's production is as traditional as they come; Chloe Lamford's costumes are all lace and ruffles, and 'by Jove!' is exclaimed ad nauseum. But something darker bubbles beneath the surface, hinted at by the ghostly chorus of white-clad women who circle the stage. The words 'prostitute' or 'brothel madam' are never uttered – doing so in polite society would, of course, be wrong – not even by the titular Mrs Warren (Imelda Staunton) whose profession it is. Yet Staunton, as one would expect, is able to create a character rich with contradiction in this vivid production. There's nothing ahistorical in her performance, yet Mrs Warren's monologues could be quoted verbatim by anti-criminalisation campaigners today without the batting of an eyelid. The version of England that greets us, however, is worlds away from Mrs Warren's seedy life. In fact, it's her daughter Vivie (Bessie Carter, Staunton's real-life offspring) who greets us from the revolve stage, which Lamford decked out in hyper-realistic green and pink blossoms. The woman perched amid this pastoral vision is no delicate flower, however. No, Vivie is strong-willed, clear-headed and a little forthright. Having just graduated with honours in mathematics at Cambridge, she's the original woman in STEM; desired by many, but with no interest in such frivolities as romance or art. Initially, her mother hangs in the air through clipped memories and whispers. Vivie knows very little about Mrs Warren, who she spends only a few days with every year on such unannounced visits as the one taking place today. But from discussions with the visiting Mr Praed (Sid Sagar) and other bumbling men who circle Vivie, it's clear there's something big she doesn't know about her mother. All she does know is that there will be a 'battle royale' when her mother arrives, and she will 'win' it. Carter's Vivie is the centre of the play, and Carter imbues this unconventional woman with the appropriate mix of modern and traditional sensibilities, even when Cooke's direction does call on her to spend an awful lot of time just sitting down. But let's be real; it's Staunton we're all here to see, and who draws the eye from the moment she strides onto stage in her striped frock coat. Of course, Staunton is too smart, too empathetic an actor to aim to overpower her fellow actors. Her Mrs Warren is a walking contradiction rather than a larger than life archetype. She holds herself with poise, but the accent – clipped RP on the surface, but with an unmissable east London twang no amount of elocution training can disguise – suggests it's not a status that comes inherently to her. Around the pair zip and weave a cast of male comedy characters, the highlight being Gardner as Vivie's gold-digging sometime love interest Frank. Their collective presence brings a farcical feeling to the show's lighter moments, and serve in direct contrast to the silent, tragic Greek chorus of women who lurk around the edge of the revolve stage and gaze at Vivie, a steely reminder of what she could have been. Between scenes, they slowly strip away the flowers and roll back the grass, so that when mother and daughter finally face off, there are no distractions. These two-hander scenes are where the real mastery of Staunton's performance is made apparent. There is so much subtle pain in her voice when she talks about the circumstances that led her to her, well, profession, and when it does bubble over that raised voice carries real heft. Somehow, the audience can't help but admire Mrs Warren's lack of shame (at least initially), to the point where I found myself nodding in agreement that of all the jobs on offer to her as a poor woman, this was somehow the least degrading. 'What's a woman's worth? What's life worth without self-respect?' she roars, and sells us that she's speaking the truth. Despite clocking in at close to two hours without an interval, this one-act play rarely drags. Tension is created and held even in the frothier in-between scenes. After all the twists and turns along the way, you don't leave with clear answers about Mrs Warren or even her profession. I did, however, leave unexpectedly entertained, and with further confirmation that they don't make actors as interesting as Staunton anymore.
