Nell Murphy and Brad Greenquist (Photo by Phil Class)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Pacific Resident Theater
Through Oct. 25
RECOMMENDED
Nell Murphy and Cindy Fujikawa (Photo by Phil Class)
George Bernard Shaw was a gadfly who rankled the sensibilities of late Victorians with his unapologetically uncensored plays, which flouted their stringent notions of propriety.
He was also a visionary whose work, almost 150 years later, seems so contemporary it could have been written yesterday. Hypocrisy is an enduring trait.
The nipping gadfly drew blood with his 1893 drama, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which was considered so flagrantly immoral that it was barred from public performance for over 30 years. An abortive New York production in 1905 landed the cast behind bars on indecency charges after a single performance.
Director Michael Rothhaar’s staging of the play, now at Pacific Resident Theater, started out as a workshop before being incorporated into the company’s regular season. From Taubert Nadalini’s rudimentary set to Michael Franco’s flat lighting, the production still seems a bit unfinished, but while the execution is uneven, it still provides a prime opportunity to experience Shaw at his most audacious.
The eponymous Mrs. Warren is a wealthy businesswoman whose daughter, Vivie, has just graduated with high honors from Cambridge. Having been “boarded out” since childhood, Vivie has had few interactions with her mother, but despite their long separations, she has always been well provided for. The two meet for an extended visit in Surrey, along with Mrs. Warren’s business partner and former lover, Sir George Crofts (Brad Greenquist, in an effectively skin-crawling turn), a debauched aristocrat who takes a fancy to Vivie, several decades his junior.
Vivie’s neighbor, Frank Gardner (winning Will Rothhaar), is the penniless son of the local minister, Rev. Samuel Gardner (Richard Eden), a canting fool with an unfortunate past. Frank and Vivie are in love and want to marry but learn there may be a shocking impediment to their union. Then there’s the Mrs. Warren’s platonic friend Praed (Stuart W. Howard), an artist whose kindness and sincerity starkly contrast starkly with the prevalent immorality that surrounds him.
During the course of their visit, Mrs. Warren is finally forced to disclose the source of her wealth to her daughter. It seems she’s a madame who operates a chain of thriving bordellos in Europe. That revelation disgusts Livie, who is ready to reject her mother out of hand.
However, when Mrs. Warren recounts the circumstances that brought her to such a pass (a moving account couched in some of Shaw’s finest writing, and that’s saying something), her stories of poverty and privation arouse Vivie’s sympathies and affection. But when Vivie later learns that her mother is still unapologetically plying her trade, she’s repulsed, and ultimately breaks with her for good.
Back in the day, the play’s graphic treatment of sex was considered intolerably lurid, but even more shocking to the status quo was the fact that Mrs. Warren remained so brazenly unapologetic about her occupation.
Real-life mother and daughter actors Cyndy Fujikawa and Nell Murphy play Mrs. Warren and Vivie, respectively. Clad in Shon LeBlanc’s gorgeously flashy period costumes, Fujikawa comes across as passionate and larger-than-life, a scrappy Cockney survivor who knows no shame. By contrast, Murphy’s unbending Vivie seems a bit stiff-backed. That may be a directorial choice, but although the contrast between the two is effective, one wishes that we’d seen more flashes of the banked fires underneath Vivie’s ascetic exterior.
Even in a production still finding its footing, Shaw’s message comes through loud and clear. More than a century after Mrs. Warren’s Profession scandalized audiences, its central question remains the same: How much moral responsibility belongs to individuals, and how much to the society that exploits them?
Pacific Resident Theater, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm, Sat.-Sun., 3 pm; thru Oct. 25. https://pacificresidenttheatre.org Runtime: two hours and 30 minutes with an intermission.
