Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw. The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, 408 Brockley Road, London SE4 to 20 July 2024.

3✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Solid but mistakenly updated production.”

Sponsored by the Shaw Society this production of Shaw’s play written in 1893 but not performed until 1902, and then in a private club, has been brought forward to the 1930s by director Jonas Comm. This was done a couple of years ago by a Theatre Royal Bath production starring Caroline Quentin and her daughter Rose as Kitty, the international brothel keeper seeking to establish a relationship with the daughter Vivie she has hardly seen. That seemed a mistake and so it does again in this stripped down but well acted production. The way women are exploited, the slave trade today, makes what Shaw was writing about topical still but the fact is that Vivie he was creating in the daughter, was a young woman of 1891 and a Vivie of 1931 would be a completely different person trying to make her own way in the world under different circumstances. Bethany Blake is a feisty Vivie and Laura Fitzpatrick is a compelling Kitty if possibly a shade common – a career as an international madame running houses from Budapest to Paris would surely have altered how she sounds, added an upper class gloss and maybe a better dress sense. She gets a succession of horrible frocks. The performances otherwise are fine although Joe Sargent maybe overdoes the cute as the corrupt vicar’s son who turns out to be Vivie’s half brother. The functional set – mostly pieces of furniture painted red – works well, although one could have done without the joke scene changes by stage hands coming on and shifting things about. The play survives, and it still makes on think, raises issues that still matter in spite of the glass ceiling having been shattered for many but not all.

Cast

Karl Moffatt – Mr Praed.

Bethany Blake – Vivie Warren.

Laura Fitzpatrick – Mrs Warren.

Jonas Gemm – Sir George Crofts.

Joe Sargent – Frank Gardner.

Anthony Wise – Rev Samuel Gardner.

Creatives

Director – Jonas Gemm.

Costume Design – Bethany Blake.

Set Design/Props – Arden Comm & Dan Savage.