Mrs Warren’s Profession
By Bernard Shaw
Directed by Michael Rudman
Richmond Theatre 16th – 21st November 2009
This is a tour de force triumph for Felicity Kendal and Lucy Briggs-Owen as Mrs Warren and her daughter Vivie. They are very ably supported by David Yelland, Eric Carte, Mark Tandy and Max Bennett, but this play is about strong forceful women making their way, against the odds and against the tide of mankind in a cruel world and Miss Kendal and Miss Briggs-Owen succeeds with aplomb. The set is delightful and simple and with the minimum of fuss undergoes rapid transformations. This is important as nothing must detract from the play and the characters and in particular the argument that Bernard Shaw develops.
Originally written in 1894, Bernard Shaw wanted to expose the hypocrisy that surrounded poor women and their attempts to better themselves in our all too cruel world. What is Mrs Warren’s Profession? That question seems in no doubt when the circumstances of her life become known to her daughter, but the words prostitution, prostitute or madam are never said. Yet the meaning is quite clear, so much so that the Lord Chancellor banned any public performance until 1925, it was produced on Broadway in 1905 and had private, club performances in London before that date.
The most important thing to remember when directing Shaw, or for that matter Wilde and Coward, is to treat the play as you would a new contemporary piece of a serious nature, bring no preconceived ideas of what you think the author meant or include double meaning other than those that are in the script originally. Most important of all treat it seriously. What happens then and what happens in this production, is that the audience laughs at the jokes that the writer intended, they follow the plot that the characters are revealing and the serious points that the author is making. Delightfully laughed at the funny lines as intended, revelled in these performances and left the theatre pondering the case being made by Bernard Shaw. This is a triumph of direction by Michael Rudman.
Not only was Bernard Shaw a great thinker and social reformer he genuinely cared for the poor and the unfortunate and had great insight into their lives and also their attempts to try and make the most of what they had. Mrs Warren was born into a very poor family with several siblings from different fathers and was essentially a very moral person. However hard she was to work, she was always going to live a drudge of a life. A chance encounter with her older sister and then with Crofts revealed to her a way where she could engage with the better things in life. It also meant that when her daughter was born a more secure life could be available for her daughter. Contrary to what many people thought at the time, her daughter is clever and able and having been given the chance to do well does so. Remember that it was in the 1930’s that Brave New World was published and that Social Darwinism was thought to be a relevant scientific discipline. So Vivie goes to Cambridge and studies Mathematics and through her endeavours, earns a reputation as a skilful and very able thinker. But she does not know of her mother and builds a paradigm of what she thinks her mother is and what her mother is about. That illusion is swept rapidly away as she meets her mother and her mother’s circle of friends for the first real time soon after she has graduated and is starting to think about what she is to do in her life.
Reviewed by Evan Rule
