One of G. B. Shaw's earliest and most controversial plays, Mrs. Warren's Profession is also one of his "talk-plays" wherein the action-less long speeches crackle with argument and confrontation so inherently dramatic that they are spellbinding. The final scene indulges in some excessive preaching, but if played as well as the Shaw Festival's four successive productions have been this more than a century-old play still seems timely, engrossing and surprising. Its comments on the roles of, and interactions between, women in society, the social and economic necessities of prostitution, and the untouchable security of manipulative wealthy men remain shockingly accurate.
Oddly, I seem to have seen only productions in which Mrs. Warren has been played by physically imposing actresses who seemed naturally in command of the stage, while her daughter, Vivie, has been played by physically slighter ingenues. In some ways, that visual contrast helps the surprise of this play's final confrontation and resolution between the two when Vivie finds her own independence and permanently rejects her mother.
In this production Mary Haney is much the smaller woman and plays Mrs. Warren not as an obviously noble-seeming leader but as a scrappy, slightly vulgar, pretty little virago whom few men or women would want to tangle with. And tall, beautiful, blonde Moya O'Connell plays Vivie as the natural leader, torn between her desire to love and respect her successful, supportive mother and her revulsion at the revelations of her mother's continuing exploitation of weaker women. Their ending as still loving but hopelessly disappointed with one another is in some ways more effective in this [for my experience] visually changed contrast between actresses.
In the first act, Mrs. Warren wins Vivie over with a thrillingly persuasive defense of prostitution as a refuge from poverty and exploitation for underprivileged girls such as she was. And Shaw gets in his jabs about the alternative, marriage, as a "licentious institution" wherein women sell themselves for security but little profit or freedom.
But in the next act, her vicious, wealthy business partner, Sir George Crofts awakens Vivie to a realization of Mrs. Warren's role of "madame" in which she has achieved much more than mere independence by exploiting other young, underprivileged girls. Vivie learns that Mrs. Warren is very rich but has no plans to retire and stop exploiting others.
Benedict Campbell plays Crofts with effortless command and slight hints of menace. And a thoroughly accomplished cast inhabits Shaw's supporting roles effectively, realizing Shaw's quirkier revelations and witticisms about social interactions between the sexes.
Sue LePage's designs are just right: dark handsome interiors and sun-drenched gardens with stylized plants that look like a topnotch early twentieth century stage set.
Director Jackie Maxwell keeps the dialogue zipping back and forth like a tennis match but builds the drama to its proper confrontation between the Warren women. Shaw said that he wrote this play for women, and it is certainly dominated by these two. O'Connell emerges as a luminous rising star, and Haney remains a virtual force of nature.
