Your mother is a what? Well, to be P.C. about it in the turn of the 20th century many women had two options; work in the factories or be a prostitute. In George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession the mother chooses the later to pay for her daughter’s schooling.
Stage Center’s version, directed by Rodney Higginbotham, was a brilliant display of amateur acting, now this is not to say it was bad. It was just barely anybody showed up to the theater (about half capacity). The setting is in London or there abouts, and the actors did a very believable crack at the Brit dialect. This is hard to do and get your lines down.
The interaction between Mrs. Warren (Cheryl Lyman) and Vivie (Megan Bubley) was at the start slow, but at the end got rather intense and believable that they were mother and father.
Other than Frank (Kyle Young, the love interest to Vivie, the other three men are revealed as an “old friend” to Mrs. Warren. If during the play there is no understanding of what an “old friend” means you really ought to get your eyes check.
Kyle Young has a certain flamboyancy to the character of Frank, but more in the way that he uses his hands and moves around a lot on stage, but this what to expect out of the character.
This play was banded for public viewing when it was published in 1893, and wasn’t produced publicly until 1925 (the year Shaw received his Nobel Prize). Even though by today’s standards the play is light compared to the contemporary connotation of prostitution.
This play is a great play to see, even though it is a rather dry approach to the matter of prostitution. This profession still exists and at the time of the play it was common knowledge, but no one talked about it in public – except in code words.
The show continues to run on October 11-13, 18-20 at 7:30pm, and is free to all NEIU faculty, students.