We had to wait a full four years for Imelda Staunton’s headlining turn in the musical Hello, Dolly!: announced in 2020, a combination of pandemic disruption and the beloved actor’s subsequent commitment to The Crown meant it only finally emerged last summer. Now, however, she’s making up for lost time: less than a year later she’ll be hitting the stage again in a rare big budget revival for George Barnard Shaw’s 1902 classic Mrs Warren’s Profession. And this time she’s brought her daughter along: Bessie Carter (aka Staunton Jnr) will star as the very modern Vivie Warren, an aspiring lawyer and Cambridge graduate who attempts to finally get to know her mother Mrs Kitty Warren – unaware she’s a former prostitute and current brothel madame.
If it all sounds rather lurid, then Shaw was an ardent social reformer, and despite its twists and shocks Mrs Warren’s Profession is about how the sex trade in Victorian and Edwardian Britain was more fuelled by a lack of opportunities for women than moral degeneracy. Dominic Cooke will direct, his third show with Staunton after Hello, Dolly! and Follies at the National Theatre.
