Mrs Warren's Profession

Synopsis

Miss Vivie Warren is a very independent girl, but then she can afford to be; she has a scholarship at Cambridge and a generous monthly allowance from her mother. She is also a very modern young woman; nothing shocks her. So how will she react when she finds out where the money comes from? Written in 1894 and banned until 1925.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 26 March 2010

There’s a spark, and an undertow of bad behaviour, missing from Michael Rudman’s perfectly measured revival of Bernard Shaw’s third of his “Plays Unpleasant.” Felicity Kendal is swift and soignée, but she’s not the real deal as a spuriously respectable high-flown Madame with a chain of brothels starting in Brussels.

The mother and father of all mother and daughter plays doesn’t ignite in the showdown between Kendal’s Mrs Warren and her Cambridge-educated mathematician lawyer daughter Vivie, played by Lucy Briggs-Owen as a pouting, ideologically rubbery adversary instead of as a fiercely principled “New Woman” opponent.

Unanswered questions of Vivie’s paternity – “Are you my mother, where are my relatives?” – bump into expectations in the marriage game involving her callow half-brother Frank Gardner (Max Bennett) and David Yelland’s parchment-skinned villainous capita...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 6 May 2010:

I agree with Gareth - and that's a lot more topical than Shaw. Marianne Elliott has proved that it is possible to breathe life into a GBS play but Michael Rudman's production is old-fashioned, dated and preachy. The set design is equally dull and the gaps bewteen scenes are unnecessary and distracting. There is also some highly variable acting - Max Bennett overdoes the Wodehouse silly ass and Eric Carte seems to think he is the next Donald Sinden (do we need one?). I also could not see the point of the character Praed as he makes no useful contribution. Lucy Briggs-Owen is mostly excellent as Vivie, although probably barely audible from midway in the stalls. I was puzzled though by her apparently nonchalant reaction to the news of her mother's profession but later horror when she realised she was still working. The only scenes which really worked were when Felicity Kendall described her upbringing in poverty and the logic of her move into prostitution and the confrontation between Vivie and the repulsice Crofts (a persuasive David Yelland). It pains me to criticise Felicity Kendall but I simply didn't believe that she had dragged herself up fromm utter degradation and her voice is not big enough to make her brief flashes of rage convincing. I would have liked to see what someone like Alison Steadman would have done with this role, but otherwise this production is a throwback to the days of weekly rep....

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