By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN?: Monday 12 May, opens 22 May and runs through 16 August 2025 RUNTIME: 100 minutes (no interval)

5-time Olivier Award winner Imelda Staunton (Hello, Dolly!, London Palladium) may be the reason for your interest in this revival but it’s her real-life daughter Bessie Carter (Dear Octopus, National Theatre) who gives a star-making turn here.

• Read on for reasons including why this story is shocking for how old yet still relevant it is today

George Bernard Shaw’s play Mrs Warren’s Profession was so controversial when penned in 1893 it wasn’t published for 5 years and performed for 9.

Its details may be less easily understood by its modern-day audience but its themes of women’s exploitation by men and the suitability of work to recover their freedom still very much rings true.

Director Dominic Cooke (Waiting for Godot, Theatre Royal Haymarket) explains in the programme he set the play slightly closer to the 1st World War to make it ‘less costume-y’ and Carter plays Vivie Warren who is fresh out of university, looking forward to finding her own way in the world and also to get to know her largely absent mother better.

What she doesn’t expect is for Mrs Warren, played with a survival instinct only a mother under threat knows by Staunton, to explain the path she chose was to avoid the fate of a sibling who worked – and died as a result – in a white lead factory.

A little post-show research finds drinking dilute sulphuric acid was originally seen to offer protection for the white lead-manufacturing workforce and that women were thought less susceptible than men to its poisoning.

Mrs Warren brings elderly friend Sir George Crofts (Robert Glenister, Glengarry Glen Ross, Playhouse Theatre) to visit her daughter and he expresses inappropriate designs on her while she is in a relationship with the son (a puppyish Frank Gardner, played by Reuben Joseph) of a former friend played by Downton Abbey‘s Kevin Doyle as Rev Samuel Gardner.

Cooke gives us an idyllic Surrey garden in revolve where the initial action takes place which is stripped back by a silent chorus of subjugated women to become a central London legal office where Vivie (Carter also from TV’s Bridgerton) finds her purpose and makes some decisions about her life.

There’s always a risk with a revival like this that the story will feel dated and out of step or relevance to its audience but that is far from the case here. What is all the more shocking is how old but yet how timely the drama is.

The reason to see it is that the real-life mother daughter bond between its protagonists is obvious here and, while Staunton is as consistantly brilliant as ever, it is Carter who rises to her challenge and proves herself here every bit as deserving of such success.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Mrs Warren’s Profession Tickets
• Have you seen an Imelda Staunton show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this preview? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook