The Stage

Mrs Warren’s Profession

Published Friday 26 March 2010 at 12:55 by Heather Neill

Shaw’s once-shocking analysis of hypocrisy in Victorian society, its tacit acceptance and public denigration of prostitution and double standards for men and women in sexual matters, looks somewhat heavy-handed now.

The subject is still timely as Belle de Jour becomes a celebrity, women and children are trafficked worldwide and our leaders are regularly caught with their metaphorical pants about their ankles in financial affairs, but the four-act play is a cumbersome form.

Performances must sparkle to an almost superhuman degree to save the audience from feeling they are observing a protracted version of Radio 4’s Moral Maze.

Michael Rudman’s production, with a determinedly unappealing Felicity Kendal at its centre, goes some way to put flesh on Shaw’s arguments. Kendal’s Kitty Warren, the rich brothel-keeper, and Lucy Briggs-Owen as Vivie, her clever mathematician daughter, make good sparring partners.

Vivie is at first sympathetic to her mother’s choice of career when she discovers the truth, given the dreadful alternative - a hellish life in a factory.

She only reacts against her when she realises that this is a profitable - and continuing - business, not merely an escape from poverty.

But Vivie’s choice of an independent, respectable career reflects her mother’s toughness and self-interest. Their similarities come over clearly.

There is strong support, especially from Max Bennett as Frank whose boyish, ironic performance outweighs the verbal tic (“ever so”) Shaw has saddled him with and the cringe-making Babes in the Wood exchanges with Vivie, whom Frank loves.

David Yelland makes Crofts a credibly arrogant silver fox smoothie, while Paul Farnsworth’s impressionistic set cleverly suggests the four locations without holding up the action more than absolutely necessary.

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