After one act of “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” you might wonder whether this dusty, dark 1893 comedy runs counter to artistic director Kent Thompson’s recent redirect of the Denver Center Theatre Company toward the fresh and female-friendly.
Then there’s act three. Talk about your women’s liberation.
“Mrs. Warren” is a payoff play, the kind with one climactic scene that elevates a casually amusing evening into a rare theatrical joy.
George Bernard Shaw’s Vivie Warren is a proper, well-off young lady raised more by boarding schools than her globetrotting tycoon of a mother. When Viv finally learns mama Kitty was once a prostitute, their relationship survives the initial test. Viv is a “perfectly splendid modern young woman” who’s sympathetic to Kitty’s tale of a lower-class woman who created her own opportunities to survive in a man’s world. But Viv turns all Ib-
sen-esque upon discovering her wealthy mother still runs a lucrative chain of international brothels.
The mother-daughter argument comes down to choice: After becoming self-reliant, mother could have gone respectable, and chose not to. Daughter finds that abohorrent. But it’s the wonderful John Hutton as Kitty’s business partner Crofts who confronts Viv with the truth that hooking paid for her education, her clothes – and the high angle of her nose in the air.
There’s great support work all around – Kitty’s colorful cadre of male admirers includes the reliable Randy Moore as a checkered and cheeky preacherman who may well have sown more than just biblical seeds around town (does anyone utter more hysterical nonverbal sounds?); the handsome James Knight as Viv’s charmingly insubstantial suitor Frank; and the droll Richard Sheridan Harris as Praed, who always has a quip at the ready (he’s called the Greek chorus in the program notes). Hutton delivers one priceless moment, begging stupidly for Viv’s attention one second, his frivolity turning to menace the next.
But this play belongs to two powerhouse actresses – the esteemed Jeanne Paulsen, so riveting in last year’s “All My Sons,” and terrific newcomer Nisi Sturgis as Viv. These two headstrong women make a great argument for nature over nurture. They’re both pragmatic working girls; one just happens to be Rosie the Riveter, the other Gypsy Rose Lee.
Shaw would never have stood for moments of weepy sentiment between these two, and director Bruce K. Sevy’s great accomplishment (after casting) is how his women convey metaphor more than melodrama. Shaw would applaud. I nearly did on Sturgis’ guttural scream of regret for having gone sentimental “for one moment in my life!”
There’s no question where Shaw sides: There’s no place for principles in an argument of morals versus money. If Viv wants to be alone, she’ll get what she wants. In rejecting both mother and suitor in favor of moral superiority, she’s emotionally and sexually empty.
But there’s a price for Kitty to pay as well – not for her business pursuits but for 20 years of hands-off mothering. She’s produced a practical daughter who wants nothing to do with her.
Kitty is also destined to be alone, for she won’t have a daughter to care for her in her old age. Their final confrontation, while stunning, is quite sad: Viv cuts her own throat, and in doing so, breaks her mother’s heart. How can we feel anything other than an intended ambivalence after a war between moral absolutes produces no clear winner?
Matt Swartz’s constant outdoor underscore is notable, as are his lighthearted scene-change songs like “I’m Henry the VIII” – not the Herman’s Hermits version but a 1911 recording by Henry Champion, a performer in the old British music halls. But some costumes, while natty, looked slept in, even on opening night. And an absurd (but necessary) deference to the state indoor smoking ban requires Sturgis to puff out rather than in on her ridiculous fake powder cigarette.
As for Paulsen, I’d watch her in a coma – surely she’d find a way to make it look interesting. She delivers one unapologetic plum after another (and with aplomb), none more powerfully than her inelegant admonition: “The hypocrisy of the world makes me sick!”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
| “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”
DARK COMEDY|Denver Center Theatre Company|Written by George Bernard Shaw|Directed by Bruce Sevy|Starring Jeanne Paulsen and Nisi Sturgis|THROUGH APRIL 21|At the Space Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex|6:30 p.m. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 1:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays|2 hours, 20 minutes |$36-$46|303-893-4100, 866-464-2626, all King Soopers or denver center.org; 800-641-1222 outside Denver
