Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Often the most interesting and engaging part of a GEorge Bernard Shaw drama is his preface. One feels the play was written only to give opportunity for writing the preface. With Saint Joan, Pygmalion, Major Barbara, and Mrs. Warren, Mr. Shaw reports most explicitly and at length in the preface the subtle points of the play. In this case, we do not read the preface, but see the play in its entirety, well played, and denuded of its excellent preface. Nevertheless, we get the message, that the British aristocracy and anglican ecclesial authorities found too much profit in the Mrs. Warren's profession and its ancillary support systems and accidental legal proceedings to do away with it by providing a good professional education or a living wage to women factory workers, etc.
Unlike some others of this series, the BBC got it right with this Shavian production. The acting is excellent; the direction sublime. Despite the tendency towards preachiness and unreal dialogue or situations in Mr. Shaw's work, this production is very convincing to the modern "realist" viewer. The most direct comments on societal systemic injustice are pronounced with great emotion and conviction which makes them compelling and real. Perhaps we in our time and place do not speak in this manner anymore, but the actors here with great talent and skill can sell us their lines and we believe them as true. And what they have to say is in fact true, and a scathing commentary on the capitalist system which found great profit in starving women with slave wages in dangerous conditions, denying them education and suffrage, etc. and forcing them for survival's sake into the most degrading and demoralizing of work, including Mrs. Warren's Profession, which we see here for what it is, not a a labor of love but of toil and horror, and profit to its distant investors, including the renters of the same anglican church which then preaches against it. The play asks us wherein lies the fault of this grotesque immorality: in the individual women or in the society which forces them into it and supports it and coldly receives the profit sharing?
For once you can trust the BBC production is very well done, and supports this drama by Irish playwright Mr. Shaw, whose total work deserves now more than ever complete and careful study. The other drama attached to this disk is of lesser interest, as it is more of a drawing room family drama, with some slight economic and social comment, but less well presented, despite Patrick the great Irish actor growling and glowering throughout. See his expurgated Lear instead.
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What is the profession that has enabled Mrs. Warren to give her daughter all the benefits of "good society?" Vivie Warren discovers her mother's secrets and embraces her own power as a "modern" woman.
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