Actress Catherine McNallly Triumphs in once-controversial Shaw play

Mrs. Warren’s Profession
By Bernard Shaw
Perth Classic Theatre Festival to August 12

On the surface, Mrs. Warren’s Profession may simply seem to be a late Victorian shocker about a wealthy female brothel-keeper who eventually gets her comeuppance from the daughter she has carefully reared in a cocooned world of privilege and propriety.
But the play has more on its mind than tabloid sensationalism There is no denying the dramatic power of those closing scenes when Vivie Warren, the secrets of her family history finally laid bare, confronts her mother with her knowledge of the truth and brutally seizes control of her own destiny.
That power asserts itself in Perth Classic Theatre Festival’s new production of George Bernard Shaw’s much banned play. But its impact is primarily due to the stellar performance of Catherine McNally as Mrs. Kitty Warren, that resourceful entrepreneur who has dragged herself from the depths of poverty to become the successful manager of a string of European bordellos.
One reason the play caused such an uproar back in the late 1890s — an uproar that denied it a public performance in the United Kingdom until 1925 — was the way in which it perceived the character of Mrs. Warren. It was bad enough that it dealt with “prostitution” — although that word is never mentioned in the play’s text — and that it suggested that respected members of the Establishment were prepared to profit from such enterprises. But Shaw also had the effrontery to give us a Mrs. Warren who is considerably less than a monster. Rather she is someone who proved capable enough to take advantage of the limited economic opportunities available to women of that time, particularly those of the lower classes, in order to better herself.
Shaw’s own stage directions are scarcely judgemental when he describes Mrs. Warren as “a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman.” And Catherine McNally has taken them to heart in a portrayal in which tinges of vulgarity are not completely absent from the outward trappings of material success. That illicit sex provides the conduit for her success is of less importance to Shaw than his need to attack the type of economic and social structure that has left a Kitty Warren so few options in life.
Those concerns, and their underlying ironies, eluded leading critics of the day. “The play is morally rotten,” fulminated the reviewer for The New York Herald on the occasion of Mrs. Warren’s American debut, which was promptly shut down by the police in 1905. “It defends immorality. It glorifies debauchery. . . . Worst of all it countenances the most revolting forms of degeneracy, by flippantly discussing the marriage of brother and sister, father and daughter . . . .”
We can better see it now as a morality play. It is also, in its own ironic fashion, a feminist statement from a dramatist whose works reveal a recurring interest in strong and intelligent women and who here offers two striking examples in the persons of Kitty Warren and her equally formidable daughter.
Laurel Smith’s production seeks to draw out the narrative strengths of a script that sometimes doesn’t easily reveal them. Shaw tended to view his plays as pegs on which he could hang his ideas, but there’s nothing static about the show now on view in Perth. Smith keeps it moving along briskly and isn’t afraid of bringing out the comedy, caustic though it may be.
The play is well served by some substantial performances. Nicholas Rice, the sleaze scarcely contained behind a barracuda smile, is outstanding as Sir George Crofts, Kitty Warren’s oily and opportunistic business partner. Kyle Orzech adroitly brings off a blend of charm, wit and cheerful cynicism in a terrific portrayal of Vivie’s erstwhile suitor, and as this young man’s clergyman father, Colin Legge’s humbug pomposity defines his character admirably. And Douglas Hughes’s portrayal of Praed, an old but uncomprehending friend of Mrs. Warren, has a certain endearing quality.
Good performances, and typical of the Perth Festival’s concern for quality — a concern reflected as well in Roger Schultz’s spare but workable set design.
On the debit side, the work’s moral texture is somewhat invisible in this production and so is sense of high emotional stakes at play. Mrs. Warren’s Profession may have the trappings of melodrama but it is actually more than that.
Given the evening’s uncertainty of tone, how should we view that famous final scene in which Vivie, now confident in her independence and in her ability to make her own mark in a predatory world, sends her wicked mother packing? Surely, it should be more than a piece of spectator sport that invites us to enjoy watching Kitty Warren get what she deserves. The production — having now reached a sort of “wicked witch is dead” mode — does the play no service by actually following the cast’s curtain call with a nonsensical coda that shows the victorious Vivie in a cigar-smoking celebratory mood.
Former National Theatre artistic director Ronald Eyre looks at the mother-daughter dynamic and sees a “desolation along which Pinter looks cosy.” Commenting on a 1985 London revival , Irving Wardle of The Times wrote of the ugliness of Vivie’s decision to separate herself from society and future emotional involvements. And Charles Spencer of The Telegraph wrote of the play’s capacity to move an audience — particularly in the final moments which he found “almost unbearably painful.”
At Perth we have a production that in its current state doesn’t always get to these places. Where there is a convincing emotional anchor, it’s to be found in Catherine McNally’s Kitty Warren — loud, brassy, casually matter-of-fact about her own power in a male-dominated enterprise. Her notion of what it takes to be a loving mother is to keep her distance from Vivie while ensuring her a good upbringing and the promise of financial security when her daughter reaches adulthood. But vulnerability is also present in this performance — a vulnerability rooted in the wretchedness of Kitty’s own beginnings — and no amount of steely reserve can keep it from surfacing.
It is a complex characterization but at this point in the run it doesn’t find a matching complexity in the misconceived Vivie of Anna Burkholder. This actress, so enjoyable in last year’s Candida, can command the stage with her presence, but currently what she’s giving us is less a characterization than a prolonged self-satisfied smirk.
Catherine McNally’s Kitty Warren again supplies a dramatic anchor. “Lord help the world if everyone took to doing the right thing,” Mrs. Warren mutters before taking her leave. There’s no neatness and tidiness to this moment. The play’s moral ambiguities survive.

Director: Laurel Smith
Set: Roger Schultz
Lighting: Wesley McKenzie
Sound: Matthew Behrens
Costumes: Renate Seiler
Cast:
Vivie Warren……………………………….Anna Burkholder
Praed………………………………………..Douglas Hughes
Rev. Samuel Gardner……………………….Colin Legge
Mrs. Kitty Warren…………………………..Catherine McNally
Frank Gardner……………………………….Kyle Orzech
Sir George Crofts……………………………Nicholas Rice