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Mickey Jo
RIP George Bernard Shaw. You would have loved Mamma Mia. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre and earlier this very evening I was invited to go along to the Garrick Theatre in London to see the press night performance of Mrs. Warren's profession, notably starring real life mother and daughter. Playing mother and daughter on stage. Imelda Staunton, multi Olivier Award winning actress returning to the London stage less than 12 months after her most recent award winning performance as Dolly Levi in hello Dolly as she tends to do, following it up with a play alongside her real life daughter Bessie Carter. Now this is a new production of George Bernard Shaw's provocative play directed by Dominic Cook, reuniting him with Staunton. They are once again working together and though the piece itself, first performed over a century ago, is very classic, the staging of it and the feel of the thing feels considerably more contemporary in ways that I'm going to explore explore throughout this full review. If you'd like to know more about the play, what I thought about it and the performances, stay tuned. But as always, I'm particularly intrigued to hear what you thought of it. If anyone has already seen Mrs. Warren's profession at the Garrick Theatre, please let us all know in the comments section what you thought of it. And as always, if you enjoy listening to my review, make sure that you're subscribed right here on YouTube. Turn on those notifications so that your mobile telephone device or computer or however you are seeing my face or hearing my voice lets you know every time I share a new review or if you would prefer to do so, you could also follow me on podcast podcast platforms. For now though, let's dig in. Here's what I thought of Mrs. Warren's profession at the Garrick Theatre. So let's begin with a little bit of conversation about the plot, the ideas and the themes explored within this play, this problem play by George Bernard Shaw. Which is to say that it explores the idea of a problem within society, not that the play itself is problematic. We'll get on to all of that now. The first character who we meet is Vivi Warren. She is the daughter of Mrs. Warren, who has talked about before she emerges on stage. Something else that happens before we even meet Vivi's mother is she admits in conversation with a gentleman named Mr. Praed that she doesn't really know her mother whatsoever, having been raised separately to her in the care of boarding schools and other establishments of education, she has been able to receive a great education. Now, when she says this, it's character building. It's laying a foundation for the relationship between her and her mother that is going to be heavily explored within the play. It's also an instrument of exposition because it empowers the gentleman she's in conversation with in the scene to share his own thoughts about her mother. Everyone has an opinion about Mrs. Warren, some of them more informed than others, and the reason for that is that there is a revelation to come here. This is something of a spoiler alert, but it's also the notion on which the entire play hinges. I should say that the undercurrent of all of this and the factors motivating all of the decisions and the plot and the context of everything that unfolds is, as always in society stories set in this particular time period, the idea of money and wealth, especially for women, and alongside that, the idea and importance of good marriage, which in and of itself is just about money. But the thing that we come to understand is that Mrs. Warren's profession, as noted in the title of the play, is in fact the oldest profession in the world. And no, I'm not talking about theatre criticism. In fact, I have no idea when that started. But God only knows what you used to do without us. Probably. Probably just enjoyed a lot of theatre. Anyway, this is revealed to us, the audience, and to Vivie, Mrs. Warren's daughter, @ the same time, as she admits it in a revelation about her upbring and the circumstances which forced her essentially to choose this line of work for herself, to kind of take control over her own impoverished circumstances and try and create wealth for herself from humble beginnings, with the only option that was really available to her. The conversation which brings this about is one in which Vivi, having admitted earlier that she has no idea who her father is, asks her mother if she might know who her father is, suggests it might be one particular gentleman, only for her mother to reply, I'm certain that it's not him, at least, and all of a sudden it's Mamma Mia. But the interesting thing I think about this play, and the thing that also made it very controversial when it was first performed at the very beginning of the 20th century, is that it criticizes how sex work was thought of at the time. And it illustrates, you know, the empowerment of young women to create wealth for themselves and find an income stream using that thing for which they've been scrutinized, you know, taking advantage of their position in society, as indeed people continue to do. Hence that industry continuing, hence it being called the oldest profession. Yes, George Bernard Shaw was surprisingly sex work positive here, really challenging the perception of it within polite society, also taking aim at many of the hypocrisies of that society. There's also a deeper level on which this all works, because if, you know, some of the behaviours and attitudes of the thing don't necessarily resonate with where we are now in 2025, the challenges of the mother daughter relationship definitely do. And that's the thing that emerges from this play and feels you constant and unchanging. And as it goes on, the most sophisticated idea of the play is to really illustrate the comparison between the mother daughter relationship and that between a madam and the prostitute who she recruits. Asking the question, is there to some extent similarities with the way that mothers of the time in society would try and engineer the lives and futures of their daughters and potentially even marry them off to wealthy men? Is there some similarity between that and the work of a madam? This becoming particularly relevant when the young Ms. Warren, who had gained a huge amount of sympathy for her mother because of the circumstances of her upbringing and realizing that she essentially had no choice but to go into this degrading and difficult line of work, is subsequently informed that her mother continues to work in the profession, only now it's in a management role. Yes, our Mrs. Warren is a prostitution girl boss, and this understandably makes her daughter feel slightly differently about the situation. And as the two of them debate their feelings around this, we are positioned to consider the enduring challenges and disadvantages of women through history. Ongoingly, the play depicts and comments on attitudes and characteristics that at the time were considered to be part of a bold new generation of empowered young women. Vivi makes the decision to go and gain employment and dedicate herself to that rather than, you know, the kind of society behaviors that might be expected of her. But like any great play, exploring a topic of debate sure allows this to be turned over a couple of times. When it's initially introduced, you know, we're pre endeared to the character of Vivi just because of the way that the play has been written in those early scenes, by the time that Mrs. Warren arrives, the way that she's characterized the way that the whole thing has been engineered, it's as though we're meant to be on her daughter's side. And so, you know, we're just as stunned when she comes out with this revelation. And we felt the same way about her that her Daughter did. But once we learn this about her past and, you know, she's sharing these heartfelt admissions that she had this real fear of death in poverty and that she'd had a half sister who had died working in a white lead factory, and these dreadful realities about the fact that, like she says, she only expected her hands to get a little paralyzed. She didn't expect to die doing that work. We immediately feel hugely for Mrs. Warren, but then it turns again and we sort of feel as betrayed as her daughter does by the subsequent understanding of what it is that she continues to do. And, you know, there's plenty of criticism to be made of both. There are moments when the young Ms. Warren is sort of ignorant of the privilege that has been afforded to her. Something that she tries to then reckon with moving through the rest of the play. But it's great that we have the opportunity to consider it from this side. Oh, but now introduce this idea. Ah, but if we look at it this way and if we, you know, sort of introduce the idea of this, then we're really empowered to form our own opinions, which is something that I like at the theater. I just wish that they gave us an interval in order to do that. But I'll talk more about that later. In any. Any case, this is a play where fairly straightforward characters articulate nuanced ideas around this particular topic and bigger feelings about society and the role of women. Mrs. Warren points out a similarity between the work that she did as a young woman and the way that wealthy young women are expected to behave. She says, what is any young girl raised to do if not to try and catch the eye of a wealthy suitor? At the same time, noting the absolute difference between her young circumstances and those of her daughter, who has benefited from the wealth that her mother now has, she says, it would be foolish for you to go into this line of work, but I would have been foolish to do absolutely anything else. One of my favorite lines as well from this play, which I think just resonates so powerfully. Mrs. Warren says, if people arrange the world that way for women, there's no good in pretending it's any other way. And with that short, also indicates to us that it's utterly hypocritical for a world and a society that have arranged themselves that way for women to judge women for, you know, benefiting from that. And these unbelievably are conversations that we are still having about the sex workers industry in 2025. George, you are on to something. There's also a bigger Conversation here about the idea of. And this is also a quote from the play, what's a life worth? What's a woman worth if she doesn't have self respect? And this confrontation and shifting relationship between mother and daughter eventually becomes a trial where Vivi is deciding whether or not she respects her mother and her mother is waiting to find out. And so that's a little more information about what this play actually is. This particular production by Dom Dominic Cook has trimmed the whole thing down to a one act, one hour, 45 minute version. I do think there's a perfect place to put an interval, but I'll get on to that a little bit later. And in various creative choices, which I'll also tell you about later on in this review, it feels as though he's trying to draw out thematic parallels with a sort of a Greek tragedy. It's almost an oedipussification of. Of Mrs. Warren's profession, which, now that I say it out loud is not necessarily a great word, but that's when it feels like to me, you know, we have a similar sort of an intensity. We have revelations about family history and we maybe even have a little bit of an incestuous surprise. Lots to look forward to in Mrs. Warren's profession. But before I tell you about the really exciting creative choices, the bold performances and, you know, the fine work and good theatre happening on this stage, I do want to talk about some of the shortcomings. So in much of how this play is being staged, there is this very intense and scrutinizing quality that I will talk more about, that I appreciate. But it also allows the whole thing to start to feel very clinical and a little unemotional. And that's probably my biggest complaint with the thing is, you know, it's admirable and it's of objectively fine quality. And there is good acting. There is fine acting happening on that stage. I just don't know that it carries a lot of emotional resonance. Resonance. There are fairly substantial revelations and some staggering admissions and some objectively terrible things said between characters that ought to elicit more of an emotional response from us. Instead, we sort of chuckle at something witty once every seven or eight minutes. As an example to this. There is a way in which the conversation between mother and daughter turns in their final confrontation towards the end of the play when Mrs. Warren reveals that the reason why she is trying to pursue this relationship, despite there having been sort of emotionally estranged for so many years, is because she was hoping that her daughter would take care of her in her ailing years. And there is a selfishness to this that, you know, I think ought to even have us gasping. I wanted to gasp, but if I'd gasped, it would have just been performative because, you know, it wasn't really forcing me to gasp and nobody was gasping around me. And there are other moments that miss the mark as well. Vivi has a young suitor named Frank who doesn't have any wealth to his name. He is living with his parents. Lots of red flags going on here with Frank, I'll be honest. But when he finally admits to Another gentleman called Mr. Praed, with Vivy having been out of the room for scarcely a moment, that his intentions here are essentially financial, that he's hoping to marry her in order to better his position and take advantage of her mother's prostitution money, that again gets something of a light chuckle from us because, you know, he's portrayed very charmingly, but it doesn't. It doesn't feel as though that's in keeping with the tone of the rest of the production. Nor do we feel like it's a shocking thing for him to say. It feels as though we're just sort of pivoting gently into the world of Restoration comedy rather than commenting on this behavior. There's room, I think, for the feminist conversation within Mrs. Warren's profession to be much more greatly uplifted. And there are some choices which do that. And there is also a lot of stuff that doesn't seem to bother. Also, if I may, once the incest reveal happens, we do very little with it. It feels as though, the very least, that these characters ought to have at least half a thorough conversation about it. It feels as though, you know, just not talking about it, that doesn't seem like it's a good idea. I'm no one's therapist. I would just. I. I think we need to get it out there. Now. I've mentioned a couple of times that I think that this should have an interval and, you know, reasons for avoiding one is to maintain a certain amount of theatrical intensity. And in the direction and in the production, the creative choices, it's clear that that is what they are going for. As far as the text go. George Bernard Shaw is not really on the same page in terms of creating something relentlessly focused and visceral in quite the same way. And I think the material would benefit from just a little 20 minute break right in the middle. And there is the perfect place to have one at what felt like somewhere around the one hour, perhaps 50 minute mark. It comes right after Mrs. Warren has, for the first time, told her daughter about her sordid past. And the two of them have vowed to now be closer. And she says to her mother, let us now be. Be friends. And then there is a scene transition that happens at that moment anyway. And when we next meet these characters, night has passed and it is the next morning. And it's the perfect place for an interval. Not just because of that, but also because it allows a little bit more space and time for us to feel like their relationship has changed by the time that we see them again a little bit of time later. We now know them in a different context. But also the whole point of this as a problem play is to encourage a certain amount of consideration and conversation around this topic. And an interval would allow us to do that. We don't really have the capacity to think it over for ourselves if we haven't had the requisite space. And also, also, also, I can't remember how many points I've made here, but just stay with me. If we as an audience remember, not necessarily loving Mrs. Warren at the beginning suddenly felt bad for how we had felt about her and spend the entire interval thinking, God, poor Imelda Staunton and the prostitution past that she had to go through. By the time we come back in the second act and we hear about everything else, we would feel just as betray Vivi would. I don't think that stripping the interval away from this, I mean, it would be what it would be, two hours and five minutes with an interval. I think what we lose is more damaging than what little we gain. You know, you can make it look Greek and you can make it feel Greek, but it doesn't make it Greek. Now, when I was asked after the performance this evening what I thought about this, the first adjective that came to mind was inessential. And I. I just don't feel as though it's particularly pertinent in terms of being in conversation with anything that's happening in the world right now, and that every piece of theatre has to be. I just don't necessarily understand the why of staging this right now, beyond the novelty of the casting, which we should acknowledge. You know, it is heightened not only by these fine performances, but also because of Imelda and Bessie doing this play together as mother and daughter. And it's a very satisfying pair of roles for a real life mother and daughter to get to play. They don't have a fond, amicable, loving, supportive, nurturing relationship on stage. And sometimes I think that's even more interesting. Interesting to explore. I heard anecdotally once from a couple who were touring with a musical that playing divorcees on the road and traveling around the US together, even though they were married in real life, was much more therapeutic because they could have a lot of frustration and then they get to love each other off stage rather than trying to play in love the whole time and then just being exhausted by it. And perhaps that is true for Imelda and Bessie as well, or perhaps they're just brilliant actresses. In any case, it's quite fun, I think, for us to see those adversarial dynamics between the two of them. And there's also a wonderfully ironic line where a character says that they don't see much resemblance between mother and daughter, if they're being honest. And it's just as well that these two roles are finally performed because. And I don't know how much of this is to do with the script and how much of this is to do with direction, but we have a parade of increasingly unnecessary male characters alongside them who, you know, they're pretty much just cartoons. There are four of them, in fact. We have Kevin Doyle as the hysterical clergyman Reverend Gardner, who has a couple of funny moments and can shriek at an incredibly high pitched pitch. You have Robert Glenister, who admittedly has one powerful moment as to George Crofts when he is proposing marriage to young Miss Warren despite being closer in age to her mother, Mrs. Warren, and then sort of threatens her with revelations about her mother's ongoing business and their business relationship as partners. There's some very interesting dialogue that arises from that. Then you have two other gentlemen who are friends of Vivi's. They are Reuben Joseph as Frank Gardner, the son of the Reverend, and sid segar as Mr. Prayed. And each of these two men spend much of the play trying to convince Ms. Warren of various things. Mr. Praed is trying to convince her to appreciate the beauty and the romance of the world. She, as I will remind you, is a very practical young woman who doesn't see things that way. And that certainly doesn't change as she finds out more about, you know, the harsh truths of society. There is a parallel with Frank, meanwhile, trying to solicit her romantic affections. I will remind you he's after her money, even if he. He is very charming about it and doesn't feel quite as threatening as the older Sir George. But he is at the same time more than little vain and deeply foolish, he assumes, when she rejects his romantic proposals and propositions. That she must have another young suitor and that's the only conceivable option. He also, and this is, you know, the spoiler alert moment that you have been waiting for, is announced to be her half brother by Sir George, who reveals that it's his father, the Reverend who I told you about, who is also Vivi's father, via Mrs. Warren, her mother, the word via there, doing a lot of euphemistic heavy lifting. And if Vivi is forced to spend the entire play considering all of this from various different angles, Frank considers it for maybe less than half a moment and, you know, we get an insight into the comparative expectations of men and women. You know, she has to think about so many things while he is able to just write off off the possibility of all of it because his father suggested that it probably wasn't the case. And that was good enough for Frank. He is happy to maybe marry his half sister because his father said, meh, probably not. Finally then, let's talk about those elements of this production that I really did enjoy, including some brilliant creative choices and fantastic performances. So we have to acknowledge, like I mentioned, the truly first rate acting here, particularly by Imelda Staunton and by Bessie Carter, whose performance I may have enjoyed even a little bit more. And, you know, we've all of us in London now had the opportunity to see Imelda be terrific on stage in various different roles. I've actually enjoyed some of her performances in plays more so than her very celebrated turns in musical theatre. She performed in a play called Good People at the Hampstead Theatre, which then transferred to the West End a few years ago. And that remains the greatest thing I've ever seen her do on stage. She plays a quality of desperation so brilliantly. We get a glimpse into that here. But much of that desperation for almost the entirety of the play is in the rear view mirror. There is a moment towards the end when she feels her daughter pulling away from her and she has to reckon with what the rest of her life is going to look like without her daughter. That we see that emerge. We see a slightly monstrous quality to her as well. Imelda has never been afraid to craft a very honest and raw and perhaps unlikable character. And she delivers this with her usual force. At that moment that I mentioned, she is strikingly distraught. But there are also some brilliantly clever details in her performance as well. The accent with which she speaks has an element of Cockney in it. That along with her sort of slight brashness. It's not over the top, it's not Dolly Levi, but it's there as well as, you know, a little more emotional overtness than might be expected in polite society are all indicators of the fact that she's not really a legitimate lady of wealth, that she has got herself there via different means. These are qualities which differentiate her from the polite society that she later reveals she would never be able to be a part of. She says to her daughter, could you imagine me living in a cathedral town? Bessie, meanwhile, perhaps in contrast with the force of her mother, really shines in moments of soft, delicate vulnerability. She is quite stoic, quick and confident in her delivery throughout. But there are these occasional moments where she pulls back just a little bit. There is a section of a conversation that she's having with her mother, who begins to interrupt her, and she very calmly says, let me finish. And it's the contrast between the moods of the two women and, you know, the different circumstances under which they were brought up that are really highlighted there. Bessie portrays a conviction and a clarity which enable Vivi to see through the rationalizations that her mother tries to deploy in arguments. And one of my favorite moments happens when Frank Gardner and Mr. Praed are in Vivy's office with her having returned to London to go and work, and they're each trying to convince her to go travel to Italy or to go to Richmond, and telling her to do stuff that she doesn't want to do with either of these men. And they are dancing around her on the stage, metaphorically speaking, and she is sat there calmly, cross legged, dressing both of them down simultaneously. It is after this that she brings about a conversation about her mother's prostituting past. And she writes it all out on a piece of paper, and then immediately as she's saying it, breaks down and crumples it, and the confidence with which she was about to say all of this crumbles away and she flees the room and flees the conversation. And the admission just as quickly as she initiated it. It's a wonderful moment. I actually think it's Vivi, the young Ms. Warren, who is quite clearly our protagonist here. I don't mind the two of them being pictured and billed alongside. Like I said, it's the novelty of the casting of mother and daughter. I take issue with the sign on the side of the theater that says imelda Staunton in with Bessie Carter. And I know that Imelda is the biggest star and Bessie has an exciting career ahead of her, but still, it's the principle of the thing. It's also, if you think about it, and not to invoke a previous Imelda Staunton musical theater role, but a little bit Madame Rose from Gypsy, is it not, and her daughter, Gypsy Rose Lee. There's definitely similarities. That's all I'm saying. Now what I really enjoy in Dominic Cook's direction of these two characters is the difference between them, but also the overlap, the parallels, the similarities. That's there in the text as well. There's a moment early on in the play when Vivy unashamedly says to Mr. Prade, I like working and making money. This is part of a fast moving conversation. We just drive right past that line. But later on we hear it again almost identically out of the mouth of her mother. In defending her choices and the business that she continues to operate, she says to her daughter, I must work and have excitement later going on to say, I like making, making money. Both Ms. And Mrs. Warren, we understand to be deeply practical women at a time when this wasn't necessarily expected of them, nor a very easy thing, honestly, for them to be. But what I'm really quite excited to tell you about as we move into a conversation around the creative choices, is the set design by Chloe Lamford, who has also designed the costumes. Now, it's in this that we can immediately see that this isn't going to be a particularly traditional production of this play. There is a contemporary edge to the thing. We first meet Vivi on a naturalistic garden set surrounded by grass and flowers. On this revolving circle of a stage surrounded on all sides by darkness. There is this black backdrop which conveys a sort of oblique quality to us, but also divorces it from its historic setting. It feels, like I said, a little scrutinized also by this big lit disc that hovers above the space and is sort of just as wide and symmetrical to the stage that happens beneath it. I became obsessed, obsessed with this disc that had both cool and warm lighting interchangeably throughout. I don't even know if you can see that much of that from higher up seats in the theater, but from where I was sat in the stalls. And I think just as often as there was some sort of metaphorical symbolism here, they were also meant to be representative simply of the ceiling of the office that Vivi eventually flees to, or of the sky, with most of the scenes happening outdoors in a garden. But it also felt sort of clinical, sort of scrutinizing in a way. And a lot of these elements in conjunct with very jarring contemporary soundscapes and lighting suggested inherently to us, the audience, that despite having seen these actresses before in the likes of Downton Abbey and Bridgerton, this was not going to be a romanticized story of that period. And as we continued on, something very exciting happened with the set. I loved this moment. There was a silent chorus, who I'll tell you about very shortly. Oh, my gosh. Who, at one point, as Vivie, is finding out more and more about the realities of the world around her during this proposal that she refuses from Sir George, when he points out the hypocrisy of everyone in society when he explains, you know, that all of these lofty individuals are benefiting from sort of dubious revenue streams, basically, this being George Burnishaw's way of criticizing members of polite society at the time. As the world that Vivi knew and understood is literally pulled out from under her, the set gets a essentially pulled out from under her because the very grass that she has been standing on gets pulled up from the stage already earlier on, all the flowers in the garden that she was sat in have been taken away as well. As the beauty of the world starts to fade and its realities become clearer to her. Mr. Prayed all the while is still trying to convince her about the beauty and the romance and the culture of the world, and she is having nothing of it. Her worldview is made all the more stark by everything that she learns about her mother and the money that paid for her education. But finally, then, it's that chorus which might be the most exciting creative choice of this play. I just loved this. And, you know, I think if Dominic Hook had leaned even more into these sorts of ideas, the whole thing might have been more exciting. It might have felt like a fuller vision. But this was a silent, slightly haunting group of women in white Victorian undergarments. The first time that we meet them, it's not entirely clear who it is that we are looking at when we see them again after Mrs. Warren has spoken about her history. We sort of feel as though they are ghosts from the past, that they are the sister that she described also working in the same business, the other young women who she says did very well for themselves. And it feels as though we are surrounded by ghosts of other young women who made this choice to work in this kind of employment alongside her when she was years younger. The narrative seems to suggest that the show tricks us into thinking that. But then when we find out that Mrs. Warren is still at it, not personally, but, like I said, management role, and we see the young women again and they become Such a topic of conversation as it's on their behalf that Vivi refuses this money from her mother and tries to criticize her for still being involved in this industry. First, George's involvement financially. Financially in the industry, when, you know, he had plenty of choices not to be. When we see those women returning again, we then begin to understand that they're not ghosts from the past. They are the young women still working for Mrs. Warren, still working in this industry. There is nothing past tense about them whatsoever. And then every time that they recur, it feels all the more haunting and all the more striking. The final image of the play is with Vivi working at her desk, something that her mother has criticized her for. Her mother says that she shouldn't be, you know, giving away the best of her energy and her youth and her beauty and her soul to somebody else, that she should be making money for herself. There's some interesting commentary, incidentally, on a lot of, like, service industry jobs and Mrs. Warren having described working in a bar and that being a job that traded on her beauty, but for somebody else's benefit, for the benefit of the establishment that she was working for rather than for her own benefit. But in that final moment, the chorus of haunting Victorian prostitutes, if you like, are simply staring at Vivi as she is going about her work. And that brings us to an interesting point of commentary. And that's definitely one of the strongest creative features of this production, a production which I enjoyed in many ways. Like I said, there is a lot of terrific theater happening here, and I would much sooner see a version of this play that tries to find some contemporary resonance. But I do feel as though there was a full vision here that wasn't necessarily articulated, that wasn't necessarily delivered. The production fields, in some ways, a little at odds with itself. There's still much to enjoy about it. There's still much that I did enjoy about it. And as always, I would love to know what you thought. Those have been my thoughts on Mrs. Warren's profession. But if you have had the chance to see this already at the Garrick Theatre in London, please let us all know in the comments section down below what you thought of the play. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to my review. I hope that you enjoyed. If you did, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube, turn on those notifications so you don't miss any of my upcoming videos or go follow me on podcast platforms. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for ten more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.