Resolved: George Bernard Shaw is the First Feminist. Let’s not dwell on the debate now, though. It’s never-ending. What can be said with no fear of contradiction is that Shaw believed women were the equals of men. He reiterated his contention throughout his plays. Examples? How about Major Barbara dealing with her father? How about the woman Eliza Doolittle becomes while Henry Higgins remains not much more than a brilliant schoolboy?
To a large extent much, if not all, of Bernard Shaw attests to women’s shatter-the-glass-ceiling potential. (Don’t overlook his Joan of Arc.) Then there is Mrs. Warren’s Profession during which two woman—a mother and daughter—demonstrate their superiority while four men around them barely raise their abilities above dithering level.
Mrs. Warren’s Profession is on view right now in an intermissionless 140 minutes. It’s brought back in a perfectly efficient production by the Gingold Theatrical Group and its artistic director and this production’s director, David Staller, who has turned himself into this age’s foremost George Bernard Shaw flame-keeper. (You’ll have to ask him how he pronounces “Bernard”—as Bur-NARD or BURR-nurd.)
In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, the women—Mrs. Kitty Warren (Karen Ziemba) and daughter Vivie Warren (Nicole King)—are so prominent they’re the tall poles around which the men dance. This is while unwed mother and her offspring parry and thrust over the respectability of the profession only slyly hinted at in Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession title.
So yes, here’s a Shavian play delving deeply and relentlessly into the playwright’s abiding concerns. Woman’s intellectual capabilities may perhaps place first among equals, but respectability, morality, and money are right up there. And Shaw’s notions of respectability, morality, and money are always at odds with those of his Victorian contemporaries, his beliefs, according to him, the proper ones. He was adamant about insisting he was right and the rest of Victorian society was wrong, wrong, wrong.
At one pungent moment in the action, one of the attendant men, Sir George Crofts (Robert Cuccioli) makes it his business (pun intended) to upend the cliché “money is the root of all evil” into the just as likely accurate “lack of money is the root of all evil.” When the line is uttered in a quiet audience, a silently aggregate “So true” can almost be heard.
As the play, which certainly contains its share of Shaw’s wit, begins, Vivie is about to spend a weekend meeting the mother who has paid for her education but has otherwise kept a distance. A serious young woman, leaning towards a career in mathematical calculations, Vivie isn’t eager to spend time with someone whose sincerity and respectability she suspects. On arrival and for the time being, however, Mrs. Warren wises Vivie up to some other ways of the world, informing her that the several houses of ill repute she operates provided Vivie’s untroubled path towards the goals she’s pursuing.
Whether Vivie continues to take her mother’s side is the question the plot develops. Mrs. Warren does admit to feeling “shame” about her profession—but only because that is what the larger, supposedly respectable population expects. Is that enough for Vivie? Moreover, for today’s theatergoer, living at a time when some attitudes have altered, will Vivie’s decisions register as reasonable? (The answer to that question may be Shaw’s problem, not the contemporary audience’s.)
While the central conflict unfolds, four men come and go. Both Crofts and Reverend Samuel Gardner (Raphael Nash Thompson) have uppermost in their male minds wondering which is Vivie’s father. Reverend Gardner is also at odds with his son Frank (David Lee Huynh), a neat Shaw reminder that fathers and sons can have as many communication problems as mothers and daughters. Warren family friend Praed (Alvin Keith) serves as an agreeable companion to all.
In a talky script, Director Staller keeps things and actors constantly moving about, no slight challenge. (Even Shaw’s stage directions are talky.) King’s Vivie is concentrated refinement itself. And the playing by Keith, Thompson, and Huynh easily offers what’s called for, notwithstanding Huynh’s occasional gung-ho outbursts.
Special notice must go to Ziemba and Cuccioli. Theater lovers who have followed these two through extended careers may marvel at the accomplishments they have tallied. Ziemba, a triple-threat musical regular, apparently decided some time ago that she would have to retire the tap shoes and swingy skirts, at least some of the time. She’s now molded herself into a reliable character actor, whose tough-minded, clear-eyed Mrs. Warren is a career highlight.
Cuccioli, who also put himself on the theater map in a musical, might have chosen to play his masterful Jekyll-Hyde figure for decades to come, much as William Gillette was Sherlock Holmes repeatably and Yul Brynner a perpetual King of Siam. Cuccioli hasn’t traveled that road. He’s sought roles on- and off-Broadway to demonstrate his suave versatility. His shady yet gentlemanly Crofts is another of his unalloyed successes.
The Mrs. Warren’s Profession creative team is appropriately professional: costume designer Asa Benally, lighting designer Jamie Roderick, and sound designer Frederick Kennedy. Set designer Brian Prather was lumbered with presenting one set to pass for at least three different locales—two 1912 country homes and a London interior. Perhaps that’s why Prather’s intricate white garden exteriors include shelves on which books are displayed. Think of celebrated English gardens and try to recall one that featured bookshelves.
Oh, well, this is a Shaw play, and Shaw wasn’t anything if not book-ish.
Mrs. Warren’s Profession opened October 27, 2021, at Theatre Row and runs through November 20. Tickets and information: gingoldgroup.org
