‘Censored in London!’

Inventing sensational headlines is easy for the Actor’s Repertory Theatre’s new production:

•Banned for decades!

•Stars arrested for immoral acting!

•Censored in London!

•Mama was a madam!

All could apply to George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” written in 1893, first performed in London in 1902 and brought to a scandalized New York in 1905.

Well, it just goes to show that notions of “scandalous” have changed in a century.

“Mrs. Warren’s Profession” is Shaw’s pointedly satirical attempt to shed light on one of London’s major social problems: prostitution.

It’s about a fine, upstanding young middle-class woman who finally discovers how her mother, Mrs. Warren, made her living. She was the madam of a house of ill repute.

Shaw’s purpose was neither to titillate nor to present a standard anti-prostitution lecture. Instead, he attempted to show that the blame belonged to a corrupt society and the true victims were the lower-class women who made up prostitution’s rank-and-file.

A life of lower-class factory drudgery was hardly better for these women, wrote Shaw.

“Both – vice at worst and virtue at best – lead to the same end in poverty and overwork,” he wrote in his 1902 “Apology,” written when the play was finally performed in London over the looming threat of censorship.

Shaw the inveterate social reformer was appalled at the idea that this play would be considered morally unfit.

“I have spared no pains to make known that my plays are built to induce, not voluptuous reverie but intellectual interest, not romantic rhapsody but humane concern,” he wrote in his “Apology,” which was not a true apology at all, but a scathing attack on the shallowness of his critics.

So he could only look with amused exasperation at the polarized reactions to the play when it was finally produced. On one hand, the censors and some critics lambasted it for its lack of a “moral lesson” in the conventional sense; the prostitutes didn’t commit suicide or contract consumption as a penalty for their sins.

On the other hand, some critics complained it wasn’t lurid enough, which amused Shaw greatly.

“Can I be expected to refrain from laughing at the spectacle of a number of respectable gentlemen lamenting because a playwright lures them to the theatre by a promise to excite their senses in a very special and sensational manner?” he wrote. “And then, having successfully trapped them in exceptional numbers, proceeds to ignore their senses and ruthlessly improve their minds?”

After making headlines in London, the play finally came to New York in 1905, where it made even bigger headlines. Stars Arnold Daly and Mary Shaw (no relation to G.B.) were arrested on charges of presenting an immoral play, although later acquitted.

Still, the “initial notoriety of a Shaw play was no reliable indicator of its future vogue,” says the “Oxford Companion to American Theatre.”

“Mrs. Warren’s Profession” was never as popular or as frequently revived as many other Shaw plays, including “Pygmalion,” “Major Barbara” and “Saint Joan.”

However, it sparked new interest toward the latter half of the century – most notably in a 1975 Broadway revival starring Ruth Gordon as Mrs. Warren and Lynn Redgrave has her daughter, and then in a 1985 revival starring Uta Hagen.

ARt’s production is directed by Michael Weaver and features Karen Nelsen as Mrs. Warren and Caryn Hoaglund as her daughter, Vivie. The cast also includes Patrick Treadway, Ron Ford and Jon Lutyens.