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Banned
for 25 years when it was first written because it dealt with prostitution
and how women turned to it because they were exploited elsewhere,
Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession still has resonance for today's world.
Mrs
Warren leads a double life - on the one hand, she's a loyal mother
to Vivie, while on the other, she's a highly successful brothel
keeper.
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| Twiggy
as Mrs Warren explains all to the vicar |
Cambridge
educated Vivie eventually finds out that her expensive education
has been paid for from the profits of her mother's business and
although she is sympathetic at first to why her mother had to go
in this direction, further revelations lead to other ideas.
Lesson
Before I saw this production I read a couple of reviews from people
whose main complaint seemed to be that the play was dated. I always
wonder what people mean by this, because if it's just that it's
set in the past - then fair enough.
However,
by labeling it a complaint they seem to imply that watching the
lives of people 100 years ago couldn't possibly have any bearing
on our lives today except that it's a useful history lesson.
The
beauty of Shaw is that in his social comment and unravelling of
the hypocrisy of the Victorian age, he not only shows his criticism
of that time, but shows us that in many ways little has changed
in terms of human nature.
Surely
a good history lesson is one where you can learn from mistakes of
the past - something we rarely seem to do.
And
while it takes a lot more for a play to be banned these days, the
idea of exploitation and the hypocrisy of a society are still relevant
today.
Relationships
This production, directed by Sir Peter Hall, may not have the shock
factor that originally sold the tickets but it does have a superb
cast who are able to focus on the relationships that are such a
key part of the play.
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| Twiggy
Lawson as Mrs Warren |
Twiggy
is inspired as Mrs Warren. She is flirty and sexual but not overly
so, balancing these traits well with an overlying veneer of Victorian
respectability. In otherwords, the perfect metaphor for the society
out of which she was born. An East End, 'Eliza Doolittle stylee'
accent occasionally pokes through, to show where she has come from
and what's underneath.
As
her daughter Vivie, Hannah Yelland also gets it right. This character
could easily slip into being a petulant and superior child feeling
hard done by all the time, but Hannah makes her far more sympathetic.
Ruthless
she certainly is, but her poise and her humour make you realise
that she is hurting and her decisions are from the heart and hard
fought.
Along
with Hannah and Twiggy, the cast includes Jeremy Clyde as an odiously
lecherous George Crofts and Mike Burnside as the bumbling yet knowing
Reverend Sam Gardner - this is a man with a secret!
I particularly
liked Ryan Kiggell, who as the hopeless fop Frank had some of the
best delivered comic lines while Benedick Blythe was a very elegant
Praed.
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| New
Woman Vivie looks down towards her mother |
Just
a small point though. For a woman who was at pains to say that she
had enough money for a new dress every day, she seemed to be a little
lacking in the wardrobe department! And somebody could have pressed
the hem on her second costume!
But
back to the plot! This production seems to show very clearly what
Shaw was getting at. It seemed to me that in the end it was not
that Vivie was disgusted by what her mother had done, but the fact
that she didn't say that it was still going on and that she was
still making money from it was the problem.
In
other words she was hiding under a masque of so-called respectability
and was therefore the embodiment of hypocrisy.
The
audience may sit there smugly thinking how this play highlights
our own wonderfully enlightened attitude towards women but if you
really think about it - you'll need to think again!
Mrs
Warren's Profession is at Milton Keynes Theatre from 21-26 July.
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