MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION
GUEST REVIEW BY SARA SHAW
The NT Live cinema screenings, at the Arts Picturehouse and Light, provide the perfect opportunity to see West End plays and an exemplary cast without having to schlep into London and fork out for pricey theatre seats. The latest production was Dominic Cooke’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, filmed live from the Garrick Theatre, a faithful version of George Bernard Shaw’s 1893 play that was banned for 30 years due to its frank exploration of prostitution.
Starring real life mother and daughter Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter, “Mrs” Kitty Warren has given her blue-stockinged daughter, Vivie, all the opportunities money can buy. Trouble is, when Vivie learns how that money was made, this New Woman’s response is one of typical Victorian moral revulsion rather than progressive feminine solidarity. The diminutive Staunton is powerful and unapologetic in her role as the capitalist Madame, and astutely articulates Shaw’s treatise with a cockney accent a la Eliza Dolittle. The most arresting scene comes in act two when these two female protagonists hold the stage and thrash out the ideological complexities of Mrs Warren’s profession (small p) and had it not been censored, this would have been a watershed moment in Victorian dramaturgy.
Male actors Robert Glenister and Kevin Doyle deftly personify Victorian hypocrisy: Glenister’s Sir George Croft, as the nefarious investor with a respectable facade, has designs on Vivie despite being twitchy that she’s his daughter, and Doyle’s Reverend Gardner similarly sweats over his 22 year-old letters to Kitty and Vivie’s flirtation with his son. Although Kitty’s feminist justification is convincing, we all know it’s more complicated than that. Cooke’s unlit and muted chorus of petticoated women is a stark reminder of the human cost of this oldest profession, and that it’s more nuanced than simply supply and demand and female pragmatism.
If you missed it, there are a couple more opportunities to see this play at the Light Cinema, Cambridge on December 18th and January 15th next year.
The NT Live season continues with The Fifth Step starring Martin Freeman and Jack Lowden starting from November 18th, followed by Hamlet in January 2026.
Photograph: Johan Persson
