Review – Mrs Warren’s Profession, Festival Theatre, Chichester, 1st December 2022

Mrs Warren's ProfessionYou’ve heard the phrase, gentle reader, The Show Must Go On; well, the Chichester Festival Theatre took that to new heights last week during their turn to show the Theatre Royal Bath touring production of Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession. The big selling point for this show is that real-life mother and daughter Caroline and Rose Quentin are playing fictional mother and daughter Mrs Kitty and Miss Vivie Warren. The family likeness and the real-life connection between the two would give extra frisson to Shaw’s sparring exchanges between Kitty and Vivie.

Mrs WarrenGreat in theory; however, sadly, last week Caroline Quentin was indisposed with some horrible lurgy. Good news: she had an understudy. Bad news:  the understudy was also off sick. Tuesday’s performance was cancelled, but the cavalry arrived in the form of Charlie Ives, who is the understudy for the part of Vivie, who boldly saw the show through, book unobtrusively in hand, enabling us all to enjoy a great night at the theatre. Yes, we had to suspend disbelief that this young actor was old enough to be Vivie’s mother, but theatre’s all about pretence, isn’t it? And I really commend the Chichester Theatre for giving patrons the option of swapping their seats for a performance later in the week or having a credit or refund. That’s going beyond the call of duty. There’s never a guarantee that any one performer will be able to appear at any one performance. So Bravo to Chichester, and a huge Bravo to Charlie Ives. More of the performances later….

Mrs-Warren-1“Shaw, who understood everything save the human heart.” That was the title of the essay I had to write in my first year at university, trying to work out where Shaw’s strengths and weaknesses lie. It is odd how Shaw pussyfoots around the subject of sex; he’s perfectly comfortable with second-hand allusions to the extra-marital how’s your father between Kitty and the Reverend Samuel, because we don’t have to see it. But when it comes to Frank and Vivie, together in front of our noses, he goes all coy and childlike, with Frank’s most explicit suggestion being that they cuddle up together under a pile of leaves. No wonder Vivie’s unimpressed.

MWPThe ”human heart” element apart, this remains a thoroughly engrossing and ever relevant play, with Mrs Warren’s actual profession never being explicitly mentioned – but clearly, she’s a madam of a brothel with branches all over Europe and an excellent businesswoman to boot; making enough money to drag herself out of childhood poverty to pay for a fine education for her daughter. That fine education has created a Thoroughly Modern Vivie, who admires her mother for her tenacity and resilience, and can even tolerate knowledge of the profession itself. What she can’t take is that her mother is still active in the business. Rather like Shaw’s treatment of the past liaison between Kitty and the Rev, it’s ok whilst it’s in the past, but not ok when it’s in the present.

MWPThere’s an enormously telling speech from the horrendous Sir George Crofts where he reveals to Vivie, “do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well, that was founded by my brother the M.P. He gets his 22 per cent out of a factory with 600 girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough to live on. How d’ye suppose they manage when they have no family to fall back on? Ask your mother.” Everything has its price, and there’s a price to pay for everything. Prostitution is/was an ugly word, ugly enough to cause the censor to prohibit the public performance of the play for over thirty years. But it pays the bills. And today there are tens of thousands of people in proper jobs but not earning enough to live on. Plus ça change…

Kitty and CroftsDavid Woodhead has designed an effective but relatively simple set (great for touring) with the first three acts set firmly in the outdoors, with Vivie’s house and the Reverend Samuel’s church both almost comically tiny and bijou, to be replaced in the final act by the very workaday and unglamorous offices where Vivie works. Anthony Banks directs the play with laudable straightforwardness – Shaw’s words do all the talking in this piece.

Sadly, as you will realise, I can’t comment on Caroline Quentin’s performance, but Rose Quentin (who looks remarkably like Caroline did in Men Behaving Badly), is terrific as Vivie, direct, determined, but occasionally letting us see the vulnerability she strives to conceal. Simon Shepherd is excellent as the slimy Crofts, oozing his way around the stage in the hope of attracting Vivie, and the ever-reliable Matthew Cottle is also great as the Reverend who is full of fallibility. I thought Stephen Rahman-Hughes struggled a little to find the role of Praed; it’s not an easy role because Shaw doesn’t give you much to go on. But Peter Losasso is superb as the likeable but wet Frank, a waster and a parasite but such pleasant company.

MWPBut in our performance the night belonged to Charlie Ives. Taking on the role of Kitty with such short notice, she threw herself into the play with gusto, giving us all the character’s brassy confidence, mother-from-hell-type bossiness, but still with a great sense of humour and a definite twinkle in her eye; 80% of the time you totally forgot that she wasn’t Caroline Quentin and was reading the script and she definitely held the evening together, rather than her supporting cast holding it together for her – if that make sense. I admit, we were tempted to cancel seeing the show, and taking the theatre’s generous offer of a credit. But I am so glad we didn’t. A very good production of a still very relevant play, it continues its tour through to April 2023.

Production photos by Pamela Raith

4-starsFour They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Another ten theatre memories? OK then – five plays and five dances … May to December 1997

  1. Nederlands Dans Theater 2 – Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 31st May 1997

Passing over a jolly visit to the Moscow State Circus at the Battersea Big Top, our next show was a tour from NDT2, whom the programme refers to as “Europe’s Foremost Contemporary Dance Company”, and they were certainly a contender for that title. The Youth Department of the Netherlands’ NDT1 main company, this was the first time we had seen them and we were bowled over by their skill and artistry. The programme was Jiri Kylian’s Songs of a Wayfarer, Hans van Manen’s Solo, Johan Inger’s Mellantid, and finally, Nacho Duato’s Jardi Tancat. All the members of this amazing company have gone on to have rich and varied careers in the world of dance.

  1. The Return of Sherlock Holmes – Middle Ground Theatre Company at the Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 10th June 1997

Middle Ground returned to the Wycombe Swan with Ernest Dudley’s adaptation of Conan Doyle’s collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, directed by Harry Landis. Leading the cast as Holmes was Michael Cashman, now a Life Peer in the House of Lords. It also featured Frederick Pyne and Nicholas Smith who had appeared in Middle Ground’s previous production at the Wycombe Swan. I can’t fully remember, but I think this had a very poor audience and as a result the atmosphere was a bit lacking. Great cast though.

  1. Mrs Warren’s Profession – Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 23rd June 1997

Safe pair of hands Alan Strachan directed this touring production of Shaw’s third play, one of his Plays Unpleasant, largely a vehicle for another safe pair of hands, Penelope Keith, to be versatile on stage. I think we all know what Mrs Warren did for a living. The excellent support cast included Charles Kay and Denis Lill. Very enjoyable.

  1. Lettice and Lovage – Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 30th June 1997

We’d missed the West End production of Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage and so I was keen to see this touring production, although I was uncertain of the casting of Hinge and Bracket in the two main roles – much as I loved them as an act. I needn’t have worried; they fitted in perfectly, and it was an excellent production, directed by Graham Watts.

  1. Laughter on the 23rd Floor – Oxford Playhouse, 28th August 1997

Moving past that year’s Pendley Festival offering – Macbeth, our next show was a production of Neil Simon’s comedy Laughter on the 23rd Floor, with a fantastic cast led by Frank Finlay, also featuring Sandra Dickinson, Peter Polycarpou and John Challis. It was Simon’s recreation of 1950s TV comedy, where he cut his writing teeth. I only wish I could remember more about it!

  1. The Woman in Black – Fortune Theatre, London, 30th August 1997

Only ten years after it opened in London, we finally got to see this extraordinary play – and have seen it three times since then. Perfectly located in the Fortune to accentuate the intimate, claustrophobic terror of the story, it boasted two excellent performances from Robert Demeger and David Pullan. Still going strong! Nothing’s going to stop this one.

  1. Carmen – Czech National Ballet at the National Theatre, Prague, 30th September 1997

We took the opportunity to discover some Czech ballet whilst on holiday in Prague, and a visit to the National Theatre is a very rewarding experience if you should ever find yourself there. To say that it was avant garde is to underestimate its oddness. Any production of Carmen that starts with a naked dwarf jumping around isn’t going to lend itself too much to the original. Nevertheless, we kind of enjoyed it. Kind of.

  1. Cinderella – Adventures in Motion Pictures at the Piccadilly Theatre, London, 11th October 1997

As soon as Matthew Bourne’s follow up to his incredibly successful Swan Lake was announced, I snapped up tickets. Set in London during the Blitz, his Cinderella featured a dashing pilot and an angel – as well as some of the roles you might normally expect with this story! Nothing was ever going to beat Swan Lake and maybe I was slightly disappointed because of that – but this was a fine performance of an innovative new dance show, and the cast list was superb – Adam Cooper, Lynn Seymour, Sarah Wildor, Scott Ambler, William Kemp and many more great dancers from the Bourne stable!

  1. Rambert Dance Company – 97/98 Season Programme at the Swan Theatre, High Wycombe, 18th October 1997

Never missing up a chance to see Rambert, this programme started with Paul Taylor’s Airs, followed by Christopher Bruce’s Stream (which we had seen the previous February) and finally Didy Veldman’s Greymatter. The dancers included Paul Liburd, Vincent Redmon, Glenn Wilkinson, Hope Muir, Sheron Wray, Rafael Bonachela, Mattew Hart, Steven Brett, Didy Veldman, Laurent Cavanna, and my favourite from that era, Marie Laure Agrapart. Wonderful as always.

  1. The Nutcracker – Vienna Festival Ballet at the Civic Centre, Aylesbury, 4th December 1997

You don’t think of combining Vienna Ballet with Aylesbury, but they were there and it was a very enjoyable performance of this Christmas favourite; although I doubt whether many of the dancers had been any nearer to Vienna than Weston Turville. A crowd-pleaser though!