The Washington Post

THEATRE section

January 28, 1991

Shaw’s Lasting Social Punch….’Mrs. Warren’s Profession’,  
Trading On Its Tricks

by Lloyd Rose  (Washington Post Staff Writer)

Fortunately, the heart of the play isn’t stern, puritanical Vivie, but  
her unrepentantly corrupt mother.  When she dominates the action, “Mrs.  Warren’s Profession” is as great and unsettling as Shaw aimed for it to  
be.  Born poor into a society that offers her almost no way to get  
ahead, Kitty Warren opts to do the wrong thing rather than suffer in  
honorable, miserable poverty.  There are young men and women on the  
streets today who, whether they’ve articulated it or not, have made the  
same choice.

As Kitty Warren, handsome, throaty-voiced Nancy Linehan Charles is  blowzy and shrewd.  Her vulgarity has a sensual side; she suggests  
something even more subversive than Shaw dared:  that Mrs. Warren  
didn’t become a prostitute only for practical reasons.  Shaw’s plays  
remain the work of an Irish intellectual brawler, and even an imperfect  
play like “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”  still packs a hell of a punch.