REVENUE AND RESPECTABILITY

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) knew about cancel culture long before the term came into vogue. The first New York production (1905) of Mrs. Warren’s Profession was shut down by police due to charges of obscenity, and while we aren’t seeing police shut down theaters today, funding cuts may have a similar effect. Many of Shaw’s views were progressive for his time but some were indefensible in any time: he was a socialist who favored racial equality and opposed anti-Semitism, he was also a proponent of eugenics and an opponent of vaccination. Widely hailed director Eric Tucker (Bedlam Artistic Director) brings this historically important play to Central Square Theatre.

Wesley Savick

Set in present-day London, the play opens with Vivie Warren (Luz Lopez) sitting at a large table before an open laptop, dressed in pants and vaping. (In the original she smokes cigarettes, a symbol then of an independent woman.) Vivie is surprised by the arrival of an artist, Praed (Nael Nacer), who is surprised that Vivie’s surprised, giving Shaw plenty of leeway for his hallmark witty dialogue. Vivie is even more surprised to learn that Praed expected to meet her mother at her place. The ensuing repartee makes it clear that Vivie is a smart, self-directed young woman who knows what she wants. She has recently won a significant prize in mathematics at her university, and she loves the precision of actuarial tables, but she wonders aloud to Praed whether the hours of drudgery she spent to prepare for the competition were worth it, given the meager prize. In other words, she is an extremely practical young woman. Praed is impressed.

Nael Nacer and Wesley Savick

This hard-headed practicality is a quality Vivie shares with her mother, though she doesn’t know it yet because she rarely sees her mother. Vivie has spent most of her life in boarding schools in England and her mother spends most of her time in Brussels, Vienna, and Budapest. Vivie is curious to see her mother because she wants to know two things—who her father is, and what kind of work her mother does to have allowed her to cover the costs of raising Vivie.

Melinda Lopez and Luz Lopez

Mrs. Warren (Melinda Lopez) is a commanding presence from the moment she arrives on the stage. Sophisticated and confident, she could pass for the director of a foundation or the CEO of a medium-sized firm. The latter, in fact, is exactly what she is, though the nature of her business is one that shocks Vivie when she finally learns of it. Mrs. Warren wins her daughter’s sympathy after she argues that her work was her only alternative to “wearing out [her] health and appearance for other people’s profit.” How, Mrs. Warren asks, can a woman maintain her self-respect when she is starving?

Evan Taylor and Nael Nacer

The question of respect runs throughout the play. Other men appear, including Frank Gardner (Evan Taylor), who wants to marry Vivie, his father, the Reverend Sam Gardner (Wesley Savick), and Mrs. Warren’s business partner, Sir George Crofts (Barlow Adamson), who also sees himself as a potential husband for young Vivie despite the difference in their ages. There is a problem, however. Mrs. Warren won’t say who Vivie’s father is. Is Crofts her father? Is Frank her half-brother? Does Mrs. Warren even know?

Luz Lopez and Evan Taylor

Frank is filled with contempt for his father, a dissolute clergyman, and Vivie is filled with contempt, not only for the men who want to marry her, but for her mother as well, once she fully understands her ongoing involvement in her profession. The break between mother and daughter sees Lopez and Lopez at their finest in this production; Luz Lopez’s Vivie expresses her moral outrage with an impressive ferocity while Melinda Lopez responds like the skilled opponent she is, defending the choices she has made in tones that allow no room for the shame society would thrust upon her.

Barlow Adamson and Luz Lopez

Wesley Slavick’s portrayal of the dissolute clergyman is another high point of the show, but let’s face it: Shaw turns his ideas into characters, and his plot doesn’t always keep up. Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a tour de force in that Mrs. Warren’s profession is never named and yet everyone knows what is being discussed—including the censors, who prevented the play from being performed for decades after its writing. Yet it’s never clear exactly why this group of six have converged. And while the title of the play refers to the elder Mrs. Warren, it’s really her daughter Vivie who is the protagonist of this tale, and her fate is neither tragic nor triumphant as the play comes to an end. She rejects her mother’s life and her mother’s love, as well as all possibilities for art, beauty, or romance. She forbids Frank, as well as Praed (the one character she has accepted as her friend), from even mentioning these topics in her presence, and she is determined to continue her life without any financial support from her mother or any man.

The cast

Vivie’s victory is pure—but is it really a victory? In rejecting the possibility of connection to her mother and choosing a life unsullied by ‘dirty’ money, but without love, art, or beauty, is she choosing a life filled with the drudgery she questioned earlier in the play? Like her mother’s choosing to eschew respectability for survival—and thus isolating herself socially and from her daughter—Vivie has chosen moral purity over human connection, a choice that we sense will ultimately be tragic.

Melinda Lopez and Luz Lopez

Unfortunately, the ending, which should be poignant and conclusive, leaves us guessing in this production. Vivie offers a final smile of satisfaction as she opens her laptop and murmurs “Goodbye Frank,” but we don’t know what she sees on her laptop. In Shaw’s script, Frank writes a note ending their relationship because he has come to recognize his inability to provide financially. When Vivie finds the note and reads it, we understand what she is reading and why she reacts as she does. In this production, we don’t know what she is seeing on her laptop. Is it a particularly beautiful actuarial table? We have no way of knowing that she is (presumably) looking at a message from Frank, whom we have never seen with a laptop of his own. The decision to make this crucial bit of communication digital rather than in the form of a physical note that the audience could recognize damages an otherwise impressive production.

photos by Nile Scott Studios

Mrs. Warren’s Profession
Central Square Theater
Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge
2 hours with one intermission
ends on June 29, 2025
for tickets (starting at $25), call 617.576.9278 ext. 1 or visit CST

for more shows, visit Theatre in Boston