Imelda staunton & Bessie Carter in Mrs Warren’s Profession. Photo: Johan Persson
What is Mrs Warren’s Profession? Well, she’s a highly successful owner of brothels across Europe, sometimes called a ‘madam’. Not that the word “brothel” is mentioned once nor “prostitute”, but we know what the text is alluding to, and so did the Lord Chamberlain, the official censor back in late Victorian times. He banned George Bernard Shaw’s play and it wasn’t publicly performed in Britain until 1925.
It’s what’s known as a ‘problem play’, and the problems in society that it addresses remain relevant today. Shaw uses a conflict between mother and daughter to examine all kinds of issues- in particular, the lack of opportunity and subsequent poverty that forces women into prostitution; and the role of capitalism which sees all workers exploited.
And, in a marketing dream, Mrs Warren and her daughter are played in this production by real life mother and daughter Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter. So before we delve any further into the play and the production, let’s address the question of whether we gained from the genetic connection. I’m going to say, ‘no.’ Of course, I don’t know what intuitive understanding the two may have, but, for me, this could have been any pairing of a great actor and an up-and-coming one. Interestingly there is little physical resemblance between them, Ms Carter being much taller and angular than her mother, which makes their characters’ similarly strong wills more of a surprise.
Imelda Staunton in Mrs Warren’s Profession. Photo: Johan Persson
Imelda Staunton was, as you might expect, phenomenally good. I can’t begin to tell you the complexity and depth she brings to the role. Her Mrs Warren speaks with that affected accent that people of working class origins often adopt when finding themselves in high society- vowels slightly stretched, a nasal tone- and it’s an accent that slips every so often when she’s stressed.
She carries herself stiffly, for the same reasons, but sometimes her shoulders drop along with her defences. She is firm and imperious, with a tight smile, but she is wary of her daughter, whose approval and understanding she craves. So she can be vulnerable, shown most in her widening eyes and loosening jaw. That’s just touching the surface of what she does, constantly offering subtle insights into her character’s feelings.
The daughter Vivie has all the benefits of being the daughter of a rich mother. She has just graduated from Oxford, is a star mathematics scholar and, while at this point society would expect her to marry, she is interested in pursuing a career. She is presented to us as a New Woman, a quasi suffragette who is not interested in such feminine traits as romance and subservience. She buries her emotions and is self contained.
There are two key scenes between mother and daughter. In the first, Mrs Warren, with whom Vivie has had minimal contact during her childhood, wants to get to know her child with the idea that they can be close and she can grow old with the support of a dutiful daughter.
She decides to explain where the wealth came from. She talks of the deprivation of her childhood and the limited choices available to poor working class women. Vivie is shocked but understanding and sympathetic. It’s a scene in which so many layers are stripped and both women, hardened by their lives, show touching emotion. It is especially a moment for Bessie Carter to shine when she reveals both trauma and compassion breaking through her normally buttoned up exterior.
Not for long. As the play progresses, Vivie discovers that the business was not a thing of the past from which her mother retired, as she assumed, but continues to thrive. A second scene is a confrontation in which both show their similarly strong will and stand their ground- Vivie idealistically deploring the immorality involved in prostitution, Mrs Warren pragmatically defending it as a way of becoming and staying rich.
Will Vivie accept the harsh realities of the world? Will Mrs Warren sacrifice her business, and thereby her status, for her daughter? I’m not going spoil any more, if you’re not familiar with the play.
Fabulous looking
Instead, let’s look at the production. I might have liked it to be less static to counter the almost constant adversarial dialogue but Dominic Cooke directs with considerable finesse. The action is moved forward a couple of decades to 1913, a time which seems less divorced from today than the late Victorian period, and the dresses from that time do look fabulous.
Bessie Carter in Mrs Warren’s Profession. Photo: Johan Persson
As does the set, also designed by Chloe Lamford. It’s far more minimalist than the naturalistic set Shaw might have intended. We start in a garden filled with a few chairs and lots of flowers. It seems everything is coming up roses. Then the flowers are removed slowly but surely by a troupe of women in period underwear, reminding us of the anonymous exploited prostitutes. At the end we are left with one bouquet of flowers dumped in a waste paper basket in Vivie’s office, dominated by a large desk and surrounded by blank grey walls.
Here’s the thing about Shaw. He may have been a socialist who wanted to write a play exposing a hypocritical society that devalued and exploited women but he didn’t simplify the problem. He created two rounded, flawed characters, who are more than ciphers.
His hero and chief protagonist Vivie is a woman obsessed with work and money, with no apparent love of life, not even theatre. It appears she considers her mother’s profession immoral, not because she has exploited women but purely because it involves sex work. On the other hand, the villain, if you like, has acted out of what to her was necessity and, from her point of view, has done her best for the daughter she loves. His genius is to turn their conflict into a complex drama, that conjures passion, sympathy, anger and laughter.
Other characters are more two dimensional. Sir George Crofts, who was an angel investor in Mrs Warren’s business and has made a fortune from it, is an arch capitalist who points out the business is no different to all the other enterprises that exploit their workers. Robert Glenister portrays brilliantly the man’s cringingly condescending attitude. The Reverend Samuel Gardner represents the hypocrisy of the Church, since he has previously used Mrs Warren’s services. I liked Kevin Doyle’s All Gas And Gaiters interpretation (that’s one for older viewers). His son Frank Gardner, played by Reuben Joseph, is a profligate looking around for a woman to marry so he can appropriate all her assets, as was the law in those days. Mr Praed, played by Sid Sagar, is an architect, but more importantly represents the aesthetes who put art and beauty above all else, including right and wrong.
So, is Mrs Warren’s Profession relevant today? The battle between world weary parents and holier-than-thou children is eternal, and we all face an internal conflict between doing the right thing and putting a meal on the table. Capitalism continues to be a dominant force, making a tiny elite very rich and, yes, bringing wealth to many, but also continuing to exploit an underclass, often these days in China as much as online order delivery drivers. Add to that, exploiting the planet. Women have gained many equality rights but continue to be discriminated against in male dominated industries. Has the hypocrisy regarding work involving sex changed? Clearly not as much as we might like to think. Just last week an male athlete was banned from the 2028 Olympics for raising money through ‘spicy’(his word) videos on OnlyFans.
So there’s plenty to chew on, and, if you’re familiar with the play, you might find a little less fat, since Dominic Cooke has made some judicious edits, which speed it up and remove some of the long-winded bits. The hour and 50 minutes without interval flies by. It certainly whetted my appetite to see more of Shaw, a great dramatist, who seems to be a bit unfashionable at the moment.
I would also like to see more of Bessie Carter. Her mother is one of our greatest stage actors, but she herself has shown in this production that she has the potential to reach that pinnacle too.
Ever since they were first built in the 1500s right up to today, British theatres have been running into trouble with what they put on their stages but five plays in particular- one in each of the last five centuries- shocked British theatre to the core.
The first British theatre buildings staged some of the greatest plays ever written in the English language. The so-called English renaissance ran from the late 1500s through to the mid 1600s. Theatre was the television of its day- the leading form of popular entertainment. The top playwrights of this golden era included William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. But what was allowed on stage was strictly controlled. For example, no modern monarchs could be portrayed. One playwright decided to test the boundaries.
The Game At Chess
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton was, along with Ben Jonson and John Fletcher, one of the big three playwrights of the early 17th century. His hit plays included The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Changeling. So there was much anticipation when A Game At Chess was staged in August 1624 by the acting company and playhouse most associated with William Shakespeare- the King’s Men at the Globe Theatre.
On the face of it, it was a comedy was about the pieces in a chess match but audiences immediately latched on to the fact that the play is an allegory for the relationship between Spain and Great Britain. The White King was James I of England and the Black King Philip IV of Spain.
A Game Of Chess
Among other prominent people featured was a former Spanish ambassador Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar, who was caricatured as the underhand Black Knight. (Apparently The King’s Men even bought up secondhand, items from his wardrobe to use in the role.) The new Spanish ambassador recognized the satire and took offence. He complained to King James.
Despite, or perhaps because of, it being a huge hit, the play was stopped after nine performances. Middleton and the actors were prosecuted. The Globe Theatre was shut down. Further performances of the play were forbidden. Middleton and the actors were fined. Middleton never wrote another play.
A few years later, the monarchy was overthrown by Cromwell and the puritans and theatrical performances were banned.
The restoration of the monarchy brought with it a liberation of theatre. Reacting to the puritanism of previous years, Restoration Comedy was deliberately rude in language and subject matter. Also, for the first time, women performed on stage and a large number of plays incorporated plots in which a woman disguised herself as a man, thus allowing audiences to see women’s legs in trousers which would normally be hidden behind skirts. If this wasn’t scandalous enough, one playwright decided to push what ould be shown on stage to the limit.
The Country Wife
William Wycherley by Sir Peter Lely
William Wycherley’s The Country Wife was said at the time to be the bawdiest, most sexually explicit play ever written. It was deliberately shocking with its plot about cuckolding and randy upper class women. Not to mention its sexual innuendoes. People of the time couldn’t talk about china- the crockery not the country- without embarrassment for some time after.
It went down well in 1675, but times and tastes change. Not only did people become more conservative, governments were unhappy about playwrights satirising the country’s rulers. So in 1737, Prime Minister Robert Walpole introduced a Licensing Act whereby all plays had to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain before being performed. However the Lord Chamberlain was not only concerned with satire in plays, he was protective about many other aspects that might affront public decency. In the new climate, The Country Wife was regarded as obscene and after 1753 it was not performed on stage again until 1924.
As time went on, the Licensing Act ensured that references to drugs, sexual activity especially homosexuality, naked bodies, innuendoes and much more from what some called ‘real life’ were forbidden on stage. Inevitably there was rebellion and at the end of the 19th century a leading writer of the day mounted a challenge.
Mrs Warren’s Profession
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw had already had box office success with Arms And The Man. In 1893, wrote Mrs Warren’s Profession. The problem was the play was about prostitution. The Lord Chamberlain refused to allow it to be performed. In 1902, a number of leading actors performed the play in a members only club but it took until 1925, by which time Shaw had had a string of successes including Pygmalion, Man And Superman, Saint Joan and Caesar And Cleopatra, before it was finally allowed into a British theatre open to the general public.
The Licensing Act remained in place until 1968. By then, it was in disrepute and was replaced by the Theatres Act which effectively abolished censorship in the theatre, albeit allowing for the Attorney General to prosecute a play liable to ‘deprave and corrupt’. It may say something about the changing place of theatre in society that while theatre now had freedom of expression, cinemas and television were still subject to censorship, suggesting that theatre was no longer the popular entertainment of years ago and that the educated middle classes who attend theatre could be trusted not be corrupted by it.
The day after the abolition of the Licensing Act, the musical Hair received its first performance on a British stage complete with nudity and references to drug taking. Calcutta quickly followed and, over the next few years, there was an explosion of plays depicting the realities of life including all kinds of sexuality. Nudity became almost commonplace. It began to seem like the stage had become a place where anything goes. But a play at the National Theatre showed that theatre could still shock and there were still potential boundaries.
The Romans In Britain
The Romans In Britain programme cover
In 1980, the National Theatre presented Howard Brenton‘s The Romans in Britain, an allegory about the British army in Ireland. It featured a scene in which a naked male Roman soldier raped a naked male British Druid. I don’t think I need to say that this was simulated but the first night audience was reported to be stunned into silence at the end. When morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse heard about it, even though she hadn’t seen it, she had no doubt it should be banned.
Having failed to get the Attorney General to agree to a prosecution, she invoked a piece of legislation never intended to apply to theatre- the Sexual Offences Act – and took out a private prosecution against the director Michael Bogdanov, effectively labelling him a ‘pimp’. The chief witness for the prosecution, claimed to have seen a penis. Under cross-examination he revealed that he had been sitting at the very back of the theatre- in row X. Defence counsel Jeremy Hutchinson QC demonstrated that what he had witnessed was the actor’s thumb protruding from his fist. The prosecution dropped its case.
The case settled in law that sex and violence in theatre is ‘pretend’, not ‘real’. A triumph only tempered by the judge agreeing with Mrs Whitehouse that a prosecution under the Sexual Offences Act was valid, even if in this case unsuccessful.
In fact, nudity and sexual activity of all kinds have continued to be presented in plays unchallenged in the decades since. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been more plays that have shocked people and rocked theatres. At the beginning of the 21st century, a small theatre in Birmingham triggered an explosion that continues to ripple through British theatre to this day.
Behtzi
Behtzi poster
In December 2004, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre presented a new play by the British Sikh playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. Her play Behzti was described by Helen Cross in The Independent as ‘offensive, and furious and bloodthirsty and angry in all the right places. Set mainly in the Gurdwara, the Sikh place of worship, this searing comedy features rape, abuse, murder, violence – while still managing to be hugely funny, touching and tremendously important’.
It was the setting that caused the controversy. Word got round about its content and on the opening night there was a protest organised by local Sikh leaders. Leaders of the protest said they didn’t want actually to stop the play being performed so long as the setting- the Sikh temple- was changed.
About a thousand Sikhs turned up to what was intended to be a peaceful protest. Some entered the theatre and tried to get on the stage. After 20 minutes, the performance was abandoned. There were violent clashes between some protesters and the police. The playwright received death threats. Fearing for the safety of audiences and staff, the theatre cancelled further performances of the play.
The following year, a number of Christians protested against the tour of the West End hit Jerry Springer The Opera because of its irreverent depiction of Jesus and others from the Bible. The threat of picketing by a group called Christian Voice was enough to cause a number of theatres to withdraw from the tour.
So, today shocking plays like A Game At Chess, The Country Wife, Mrs Warren’s Profession and The Romans In Britain can be performed British theatres without censorship by the authorities or by the law. However, as Behtzi shows, in these days of people power, if a play shocks members of the public, whether or not they’ve seen it or even if they never go the theatre, they can protest against it and can potentially shut it down. And while the protests against that play and Jerry Springer The Opera were by people whose religious beliefs were offended, plays containing sexist or racist attitudes and behaviour, particularly in plays from the past, are also potential targets.
I’ve a feeling British theatre is in for a few more shocks yet.
Melissa D. Aaron, Global Economics: A History of the Theatre Business, the Chamberlain’s/King’s Men, and Their Plays, 1599–1642, Newark, DE, University of Delaware Press, 2003
