MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION.
London
MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION
by George Bernard Shaw
Strand Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS 0870 901 3356
www.trh.co.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 14 October
Shaw's sex-in-the-head approach to prostitution may at least mean safe sex, but it needs stronger presentation to make its case.Shaw's cerebrations on prostitution or the sex industry, as business considerations are foregrounded - may have kept his play about prostitution banned for three decades, but there are nowadays different objections, which Peter Hall's unevenly-cast production doesn't overcome.
The ironic English pastoral idyll of Haslemere is emphasised in the super-postcard size rolling hills of John Gunter's restrained settings. But in an age when it's reported in London that the rich can order an oriental girl pre-hooked on heroin to be more pliable to sexual demands, and when East European gangs effectively buy or kidnap young women, terrifying them into prostitution involving what Shaw's age called the most brutal and degrading of actions, this discursive piece seems relaxed to the point of complacency.
Twice, the action provokes fiercer comment. Once when academic high-flying Maths. graduate Vivie Warren (complicating references to her as 'third wrangler' are excised) responds to her mother's soothing account of her past with a 'So that's how it's done' how young women are lured into the sex trade. And once when Mrs Warren openly speaks of the nauseating task of having to supply intimate pleasure to undesired men.
For the rest, there's an apparently simplistic argument that a young woman might as well profit financially from her attractiveness, not sell it cheap in shop or bar, or suffer unhealthy factory conditions.
Any ambiguities that could enrich the play seem beyond most of this cast. Brenda Blethyn gives a subtly detailed performance leaning on the couch in a second-nature pose with Frank, her polite-voiced mask slipping into ocean-wide Estuary howls when she rows with Vivie. Rebecca Hall is rather obviously the bluestocking with the academic's expression of eager inquiry, but the vulnerability shows in near-tears when her mother calls her hard and in the complex of sadness and smiles before her final resolution to set to work.
Peter Blythe gives the aesthete Praed a smooth camp elegance; otherwise the men create little impact. Richard Johnson's Crofts lacks threat, James Saxon is indecisive as the snobbish local cleric, while Laurence Fox, as his son, seems forever straining vocally, with minimal character or variation.
Mr Praed: Peter Blythe
Vivie Warren: Rebecca Hall
Mrs Warren: Brenda Blethyn
Sir George Crofts: Richard Johnson
Frank Gardner: Laurence Fox
Rev. Samuel Gardner: James Saxon
Director: Peter Hall
Designer: John Gunter
Lighting: Hartley T.A. Kemp, Richard Williamson
Costume: Mark Bouman
2002-10-18 13:57:48