MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION – REVIEW OF 2025 LONDON PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession gets a redoubtable production at the Garrick Theatre in London, directed by Dominic Cooke. It boasts the star power of Imelda Staunton as Mrs. Warren and it is a fine reminder what Bernard Shaw could do at his best.

Mrs. Warren’s Profession is in fact Shaw’s third play. He wrote it 1893-94 and published it in 1898 with his first two pieces under the title Plays Unpleasant. Producers treated it like the plague, and it was produced privately in 1902 and promptly banned from public performance. Its first production in the United Sates had the same fate. Its second production in the United States had a worse fate. It was banned and the cast were arrested and charged with “offending public decency.”

What did the play show that offended the delicate sense of decency of late 19^th century Britain and America? Many women at the bottom of the social ladder were paid so poorly that they had to resort to extreme measures to survive. A second job was inevitable and at times the only thing left for some women was to sell their body. The impolite word for that is prostitution.

Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter in Mrs Warren’s Profession. 
Photograph: Johan Persson

Mrs. Warren’s Profession deals with that subject but on such a rarefied level that one hardly recognizes what it is talking about. We first meet Vivie Warren (Bessie Carter). She is an attractive, self-assured woman living in an upper-crust house (we see her in a garden) and enjoying the life of the well-to-do. Mr. Praed (Sid Sagar) a successful architect and gentleman, comes by, looking for Mrs. Warren. So does Sir George Crofts (Roger Glenister), a mature man who is above a gentleman, he is a knight of the realm.

This is high society, and they are friends of Mrs. Warren. Vivie and we slowly become acquainted with Mrs. Warren’s profession. She is the managing director of Private Hotels across Europe. Come again? Well, they are bordellos, or to stoop to unacceptable language for some, they are brothels or whorehouses. Mrs. Warren started at the bottom of that profession and has risen to the top. She did have a child in the process, but we do not know the identity of Vivie’s father. What the women did and why is fine as long as no one mentions it and offends public decency.

We meet the respectable town rector, the Rev. Samuel Garner (Kevin Doyle) and his useless son Frank (Reuben Joseph). The latter is infatuated with Vivie. The reverend is a comic figure and played for laughs, but he does have a secret that solves the infatuation issue and a mystery.

The crux of the play is Mrs. Warren’s defence of her present position in the profession (poverty forced her to practice it when young) and Vivie’s reaction to finding out the source of the money for her lifestyle. Mrs. Warren showed strength and resilience in her ability to rise to the top and is refusing to give it up. Vivie displays revulsion and strength in her refusal to continue living on the avails of her mother’s job.

The other side of Mrs. Warren's Profession. Photo: Johan Persson

Sir George, a man of 60, wants to marry the attractive Vivie and give her a good life without her getting mixed up in the reality of what he does. His offer of marriage is based on “I have money, what more do you want” which Vivie rejects out of hand and proceeds to find a way of supporting herself.

Cooke has made a significant addition to the production: a chorus of ten women dressed in white underclothes, who appear, to change the stage props and walk around as samples of the women who work in the bordellos that Mrs. Warren and Company operate.  

Staunton and Carter give powerful performances as the opposing mother and daughter. Glenister gives a prime example of the apologist for mistreatment of people and the father and son Rev. Samuel and Frank Gardner are comic figures with an extra layer for the reverend who maintained the respectable appearance while partaking of the pleasure provided by the abused women.

Set and Costume designer Chloe Lamford has created an atmosphere of wealth and comfort in sharp contrast to the underlying reality of the play. Brilliant.

Dominic Cooke has directed a stunning production of one of Shaw’s best plays that will not offend anyone’s delicate decency but should point to a reality that has not been entirely eradicated.
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Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw continues until August 16, 2025 at the  Garrick Theatre, 2 Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 0HH. https://thegarricktheatre.co.uk/tickets/mrs-warrens-profession/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of The Greek Press, Toronto