NT LIVE: MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION

FOUR STARS Mrs Warren has come to stay with her daughter as history and emotion overwhelm them both.

PERIOD DRAMA UK English #MRSWARREN Starring Imelda Staunton, Bessie Carter

"Women have to feel a great deal that they don't feel!"

When George Bernard Shaw wrote MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION in the 1890s, he knew exactly what he was doing - shaking the establishment and forcing polite society to look at itself. It was so incendiary that the play wasn’t publicly performed until 1925. A century later, this National Theatre Live revival directed by Dominic Cooke proves that Shaw’s sharp-edged moral drama hasn’t dulled one bit.

Imelda Staunton is in blistering form as Mrs Warren, a woman who’s climbed out of poverty by running a string of brothels. She’s made a good life for herself and her estranged daughter Vivie, but one that society is eager to condemn while quietly benefiting from the system they're moralising about. Oh the hypocrisy!

Staunton plays Mrs Warren with magnificent complexity: proud, weary, defiant, and, when cornered, heartbreakingly human. Adding an extra spark is her real-life daughter Bessie Carter as Vivie, the modern-minded young woman determined to live by her own code. She provides a fascinating generational contrast: the pragmatic survivor versus the principled reformer. Their onstage chemistry is electric; every line is charged with the weight of love, disappointment, and unspoken judgment. Cooke directs with clarity and compassion, letting the text breathe while keeping the pace tight. The result is a production that’s both intellectually bracing and emotionally alive.

What’s most remarkable, though, is how MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION still hits its targets. Shaw was writing about Victorian hypocrisy - how men could moralise about sin while investing in it, and how women bore the blame for an economy that exploited them. Swap corsets for hashtags and not much has changed. The play’s themes of moral double standards, economic coercion, and the policing of women’s choices remain painfully relevant. We may have new vocabulary for 'respectability' but underlying judgments persist. 

Filmed for NT Live, Cooke’s production captures all the intimacy of the stage and the tension of Shaw’s debate in three piercing acts. Staunton commands every moment, her performance a masterclass in intelligence and control. This isn’t a dusty period piece; it’s alive, witty, angry, and depressingly relevant.

A century on, Shaw’s “problem play” is no problem at all: it’s essential viewing.

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