Much like his theatrical contemporaries Ibsen and Strindberg, George Bernard Shaw wasn’t afraid of challenging the audience and broaching serious subjects – especially the way money and class plays a big part in the dynamics between men and women. In Mrs Warren’s Profession (which is directed by Jonas Cemm), what starts as a comedy of sorts evolves into an in-depth exploration of the relationship between commerce, the ‘real’ choice available to women and whether ‘morality’ is a luxury for the destitute.

The play begins with Vivie Warren (Bethany Blake) studying at the family home, having just completed her mathematical tripos at Cambridge and secured employment for a legal firm in London. The arrival of Praed (Karl Moffatt) – a friend of Vivie’s mother – alerts her to the fact that mater Kitty (Laura Fitzpatrick) is on her way with another ‘family friend’, Sir George Crofts (Jonas Cemm) for a visit.

While a mother visiting a daughter might not strike the audience as being strange or unusual, within the context of this play and its backstory, it is. Sent to boarding school for most of her life, Vivie has no ‘real’ relationship with her mother, who herself spends much of her time travelling to certain European cities. Also, while Kitty goes by the name of Mrs Warren, no one – least of all Vivie – knows anything about her father, who is even more of a mystery to her than her mother. Praed realises that Vivie isn’t the ‘little girl’ Kitty expects her to be and that in many ways, mother and daughter will be disappointed in each other. Following an inference that Crofts makes about Vivie’s ‘lineage’, she in turns ‘pulls on the thread’ and finds herself ‘down the rabbit hole’ – not only gleaning who her father is, but how her family’s affluence is dependent on the ‘circumstances’ of other women…

The emotional journal of Vivie is key to understanding the complexity of the issues Shaw raises in Mrs Warren’s Profession. While Vivie at the beginning of the play is perhaps not emblematic of everyone, the realisation that her mother’s ‘business’ isn’t just a ‘one-off episode in the past’, but an ever-present reality. It colours her whole way of thinking – more mind-blowing and challenging than the mathematical tripos she studied for.

Levity in the play can be found in Joe Sargent’s Frank Gardner – a neighbour and ‘cheeky’ suitor who as a counterpoint intends to marry Vivie so she can live of her ‘earnings’. Frank’s relationship with his father, the Reverend Sam Gardner (Anthony Wise) reminds me of Lord Goring’s relationship with his father in Wilde’s An Ideal Husband – one not so serious, the other serious in the extreme.

While Praed and Crofts are ‘men of the world’, they couldn’t be more different. One has a Keatsean appreciation of art and beauty, the other an unpolished pragmatism. In contrast, Fitzpatrick’s Kitty could be said (to use another Shavian reference) to be an amalgam of Eliza and Alfred Doolittle – given a ‘leg up’ in the world, but using her new position as means to ‘capitalise’ on…

By the time we meet Vivie at the end of the play, the audience has to ask itself a) would it have felt any differently to Vivie and b) would it have made the same choices. In the end, the world carries on as before – only not with our ‘eyes closed’…

© Michael Davis 2024

Mrs Warren’s Profession runs at the Brockley Jack Sudio Theatre from 16th to 20th July. It also runs at the following venues and dates:
Friday 26th July, 6.30pm – Shaw’s Corner, National Trust
Saturday 27th July, 4.00pm – Shaw Society Reception with Dame Siân Phillips followed by performance of Mrs Warren’s Profession – Palladian Church, Ayot St Lawrence and Shaw’s Corner, National Trust
Saturday 27th July, 6.30pm – Shaw’s Corner, National Trust
Sunday 28th July, 2.30pm – Campus West Theatre
Wednesday 7th – Friday 9th August – Theatre at the Tabard