MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION

Garrick Theatre

★★★★★

“A masterfully acted, visually exquisite and morally knotty production”

Dominic Cooke’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession receives a thrillingly sharp and stylish revival that balances moral complexity, aesthetic beauty, and arresting performances. This production proves Shaw can still provoke and entertain, with astonishing relevance.

The draw for many will undoubtedly be the casting of real-life mother and daughter Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter as Mrs Warren and her on-stage offspring Vivie. Staunton commands the stage with trademark precision and emotional depth, but Carter is just as engaging, proving she’s earned her part – it’s not simply her birth-right. The generational tension between the two characters embodied as well as acted. Staunton, at just five feet tall, brims with flamboyant energy in set and costume designer Chloe Lamford’s jewel-toned Victorian taffeta gowns, while Carter, nearly a foot taller and dressed in sober, neutral and practical outfits, towers above her mother both physically and morally. Their power dynamic is as visual as it is verbal.

The set, a lush English cottage garden constructed on a large central revolve, is a visual treat. Cosmos, foxgloves, and peonies bloom in abundance, creating a dreamlike pastoral idyll that gets slowly dismantled, mirroring the erosion of Vivie’s youthful idealism and naivete as the play progresses. The contemporary lighting design (Jon Clark) casts a soft ethereal glow over the action, contrasting with the period dress and set.

Shaw’s play, written in 1893 but long banned for its subject matter, feels surprisingly fresh and funny. Themes of gender, morality, class, and capitalism ring disturbingly true even now. Vivie is the true protagonist of the play and a woman ahead of her time: Cambridge-educated, fiercely independent, contemptuous of art and romance alike, and with dreams not of marriage but of legal practice. The men around her are bumbling fools like the Reverend Samuel Gardner (Kevin Doyle), talentless-but-charming like his son, Frank (the outrageously charismatic Reuben Joseph), hopelessly romantic and captivated by beauty like Mr Praed (Sid Sagar) or quietly evil like the only true villain Sir Robert Crofts (Robert Glenister).

And what exactly is Mrs Warren’s profession? Shaw never names it outright, and the play dances delicately (though unambiguously) around the truth. When it is revealed to each character, the reactions are telling. It’s not the choices Mrs Warren once made that cause rupture, but her refusal to reject them now. Her justification is pragmatic, even persuasive and it is in the Socratic sparring matches between Staunton and Carter that the production comes alive.

Cooke and cast resist easy moralising. As Brecht once said of Shaw, he excelled in “dislocating our stock associations.” There are no heroes here, only complex individuals navigating a world with too few good options. By the end, Vivie walks away from her mother, her money, and all the compromises that come with it. Yet she doesn’t emerge triumphant. The play closes on a note of quiet devastation. Vivie may have escaped her mother’s shadow, but she remains haunted by the phantoms of the women who could not.

A masterfully acted, visually exquisite and morally knotty production.