Mrs Warren's Profession

Where does morality get you? Mrs Warren, who witnessed her sister's death from poisoning thanks to respectable toil in a white lead factory, and who tolerated humiliation and lechery earning a pittance as a barmaid, thinks the answer is clear: for a woman born without social standing, it leads down a penurious path to an early grave. The most egregious gender inequalities that prompted Bernard Shaw's blazing 1894 drama may since have been addressed - though misogyny, sexual exploitation and lower rates of pay for female workers are, iniquitously, still very much with us. But the limited choice available to the most disadvantaged remains a burningly pertinent issue. And in Michael Rudman'sproduction, Shaw's outrage resounds thrillingly.

Felicity Kendal is Mrs Warren, who has made her fortune first from prostitution, and latterly, with the investment of Crofts, a baronet and former customer, from running a chain of European brothels. This information comes as a horrifying shock to her daughter, Vivie (Lucy Briggs-Owen), an ambitious Cambridge graduate who little guesses how her expensive education was paid for; both play and production are most piercing in the confrontations between these two tough, business-brained survivors. But there's bitter brilliance, too, in their relations with men. Crofts, unctuous as rancid oil in David Yelland's masterly performance, feels entitled to buy Vivie as a bride thanks to his stake in Mrs Warren, while Frank (Max Bennett), Vivie's young suitor, plans a lucrative marriage to her, despite his frank disgust with her mother.

Kendal switches from rasping rage and hurt to flirtatious theatricality with the skill of one rigorously trained to please, and the moral and emotional dislocation between her and Briggs-Owen's Vivie is startlingly moving.
It's a pity the action is interrupted by interminable scene changes. Otherwise, this play remains incendiary.