Mrs Warren’s Profession

What is Mrs Warren’s profession?

Mrs Warren’s daughter Vivie has never really known much about her mother. A sensible young woman, she has enjoyed a comfortable upbringing, a Cambridge education, a generous monthly allowance and now has ambitions to go into Law. Is it conceivable that her privilege and respectability has been financed from the profits of the world’s oldest profession? How will Vivie react when she finds out the startling truth about her mother’s business empire and that freedom comes at an emotional price?

Shaw’s acid test of a mother-daughter relationship is one of his wittiest and most provocative plays. Written in 1894 but banned for thirty years by a Lord Chamberlain who found it “immoral and improper”, Mrs Warren’s Profession is a ripe attack on English hypocrisy and its “fashionable morality”

Twice winner of the British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Actress, Caroline Quentin’s many television roles have ranged from Men Behaving Badly, Kiss Me Kate and Jonathan Creek to Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge, and the 2020 season of Strictly Come Dancing. Her previous visits to Bath include Relative Values with Patricia Hodge and Rory Bremner, which transferred to the West End.

Vivie is played by Caroline’s real-life daughter, Rose Quentin. Shortly after graduating in 2019, Rose starred in the horror movie York Witches Society, and recently created the role of Katrina Van Tassel on tour in the stage version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollowwith Wendi Peters and Bill Ward.

Anthony Banks was Associate Director at the National Theatre from 2004 – 2014. His many directing credits include The Girl on the Train, Twilight Song, Gaslight, Strangers on a Train, After Miss Julie and My Cousin Rachel.