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Mrs Warren’s Profession

Published Friday 20 November 2009 at 12:50 by John Thaxter

With a beguiling smile and voice like a rasp - kissing a bashful boy full on the lips - Felicity Kendal creates a powerful, sexy portrait of the vital vulgarian with a dark secret.

Mrs Warren’s profession is the oldest, running a string of brothels in half the capitals of Europe, bringing her handsome profits that have paid for her daughter Vivie’s education. But the evening also belongs to rising star Lucy Briggs-Owen as Vivie, who opens and closes the story - a journey from priggish Cambridge academic, kicking her heels in a Surrey garden, to the Shavian new woman, making her independent way in the world of law after discovering the continuing source of her mother’s income.

Shaw’s early play is perhaps his least didactic and Michael Rudman’s superbly detailed production, matching action to the conversational exchanges, discovers a wealth of emotion behind the words, notably Kendal’s howls of pain and despair at two telling moments.

As written, the four males are merely foils to the central duet. But David Yelland as the knighted Crofts - Mrs Warren’s principal investor - swaggers dangerously with a knowing leer, hands thrust in his trouser pockets, while Max Bennett as the limber young Frank confirms his well-focused talent for comedy and generous stage presence, sharing a sustained romantic embrace with Vivie.

Good support comes from Mark Tandy as the debonair architect Praed and from Eric Carte as the susceptible Haslemere incumbent who shares a guilty compact with Mrs Warren.

This handsome touring production visiting seven leading theatres also benefits from a simple but effective design by Paul Farnsworth deploying sparse, downstage furniture backed by impressionist images of the Surrey hills and a flowery vicarage garden for the key third act.

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