Brothel keeper

Very many years ago, I read Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw. It’s an interesting play that highlights the hypocrisy of Victorian society. Shaw highlights the fact that women had to resort to prostitution because they couldn’t survive on the wages they were being paid for other work. In typical Shaw style, within a taut drama, the play debates the two sides of the argument. Shaw then introduces another moral element: When is it the right time to give up? This turns the drama on its head, leading to two words being written on a piece of paper.

A few weeks ago, when we saw The Famous Five at Chichester, we spotted a poster for a production of Mrs Warren’s Profession with Caroline Quentin as the eponymous character and her real life daughter Rose playing her daughter in the play. We decided we should go, so I booked tickets and tonight we went.

In the week I’d had an email to say that Caroline Quentin had taken ill and had an understudy come on, with script in hand, so we were hoping she’d recovered for tonight. It was a pretty packed house, and I reckon they were hoping the same.

The audience was mostly older people. There was a couple across the aisle from us who appeared to be in their 30’s but otherwise, I think I was probably the average age. This always worries me. If people don’t go to and enjoy live theatre, it will, eventually, die out with the majority of its audiences.

And this was another concern with the choice of the play. Tiptoeing around the subject of prostitution, is hardly relevant these days, so a younger audience would not understand why it was such a big thing for the characters. Some plays are timeless (The Importance of Being Earnest, Pygmalion, Lysistrata, most of Shakespeare’s plays etc) but others are definitely still firmly rooted in their own time. I’m afraid, Mrs Warren’s Profession is one of them.

This became perfectly clear in the final act where Mrs and Miss Warren talked and talked, wandering around rather than reaching the point, in a very small, confined office. The dialogue was clever, intellectual, posed questions of morality and family but, in a world of shorter attention spans, just went on too long.

In a word, and bearing in mind that I like Shaw, it was boring.

As for the performances, I felt that Caroline Quentin was miscast. She was very competent, but not the femme fatale I think Mrs Warren should be. When she kissed the young man in the first act, it was just a bit squirmy. Mirinda reckoned it should be a Rita Hayworth type actor.

All the males, supporting cast the lot of them, were fine and delivered good performances.

Now, I come to Rose Quentin. I’ve never seen her perform before and, I guess, getting a real mother and daughter to play a mother and daughter on stage would clearly be an excellent draw, but, sadly, I didn’t think Rose was very good. In the first act, her voice didn’t carry to the back of the auditorium and when her pitch rose, it disappeared completely.

A lot of her delivery felt monotone, and it was almost as if she was going through the paces rather than ‘being’ Vivie Warren. By the end of the play, I didn’t believe her at all. (And could I say that the smoking was completely unnecessary and should have been cut. I don’t say that for any health reasons, but because it was a distraction too far. Nice line about cigars but, even so…)

While I thought the two leads didn’t reach any heights, I thought the set was excellent. The sets at Chichester are always pretty good but the Lilliput Lane effect in acts one and two were superb.

This is likely to be our last visit to Chichester Festival Theatre. It was a shame it wasn’t better.