Although written in 1893, George Bernard Shaw’s
Mrs
Warren’s Profession wasn’t publically performed until 1925, “when
members of English society could no longer pretend that their world was the
epitome of true respectability and elegance.” And while this might, perhaps,
seem strange to a modern audience, in the 1890s Shaw’s famously strong socialist
opinions were deemed unsuitable for polite society. Originally classified as an
‘Unpleasant Play’ by Shaw himself, it could be read – seen, even – as a study
of prostitution, and its aim “to shew the prostitution is not the prostitute’s
fault but the fault of a society,” as Shaw wrote to a colleague. Yet, Mrs Warren’s Profession is “no more a
work “about” prostitution as a social crime than [Ibsen’s] Ghosts is “about” syphilis as a communicable disease.”
After their misconceived Pygmalion in 2012, I was at first wary
of the Sydney Theatre Company’s choice to produce another of Shaw’s plays. Very
much like Oscar Wilde (and Tom Stoppard on an good day), Shaw’s writing is
filled to the brim with dialogue and scenes which positively sparkle with the
fire of intelligence, wit and a playful subversiveness; whereas 2012’s Pygmalion found it early only to lose it
in the Sydney Theatre’s emptiness, Mrs
Warren’s Profession had it from the start, kept it and let it grow until
its conclusion, two-and-a-half hours later. It’s to director Sarah Giles’
credit that this production brings out the tensions apparent in Shaw’s play,
the core distinctions between mother and daughter, young and old, male and
female, father and son; wealth and poverty, virgin and whore, independence
and dependence, morality and depravity, marriage and a career. By re-examining
these oppositions anew Giles, along with her cast and team, has created a fresh, vibrant and I’m
almost tempted to call it a modern interpretation of one of the English
language’s greatest dramatist’s early works.
