Los Angeles herald., 1908-03-23

N OUBTLESS We are in for it.
Miss Mary Shaw presented Mrs.
~ Warren's Profession" upon the
stage of the Los Angeles theater last
night before a large audience which
applauded sometimes at the right time
and sometimes at the wrong time, but
which, nevertheless, applauded.
1t requires no lofty flight of imagin-
alton to foresee the storm of criticism
this play will provoke locally. 1t is
quite one thing to read George Bernard
Shaw in the seclusion of your home
and another to have his philosophers
or his sophistries, as you please-eX-
pounded in public. Doubtless the unco
guid will inveigh against the presenta-
ton; and they will be able. too. to
make a very pretty case of it. There
will be arguments pro and arguments
con; and when the strife wakes warm
partisans for and against will take
their pens in hand and write to the
papers, each without in the least con-
vincing 9r convicting the other.
Mrs. Warren was the sort of woman
who frequently figures in police court
records, the name appearing upon the
clerks blotter with two little initials
after it. She was one of the best-that
is to say, one of the most successful of
her class, the managing directress of
corporation which conducted operations
in half a dozen cities of continental
Europe. This is the circumstance in
which the opening of the play dis
closes her Her beginnings, however,
are set forth in pitiless detail by the
woman herself in mad effort to vindi-
cate her course to her own daughter.
Mrs. Warren Explains
She explains that she saved money;
money earned just as it is earned by
those police court women; and that
she invested it "in the business" And
she explains. too, when forced to it,
that she does not know even the name
of her daughters father.
The play really revolves about the
daughter who has been brought up by
strangers, educated at Cambridge and
who, until her mothers confession,
knows nothing of the life her mother
had led. Cold, devoid of sentiment.
with the brain of a man, the girl ac-
cepts her mothers plea that she was
driven to her trade by a social system
which repays virtue with pence and its
opposite with pounds. Subsequently,
however. when she learns that "the
business" still is being operated be-
cause, forsooth, it pays 80 per cent on
the money invested, she runs away
from her mother, returns the money
to make her own living.
Like all of the Shaw plays there is
little physical action in Mrs. Warren
Profession" The play itself is not
acted The characters are and in the
present instance finely acted into the
bargain.
The Plays justification
Its justification, so far as there is
justification. must rest upon the fact
that it emphasizes condition of So
ciety already so generally understood
that it would seem to be in need of no
such exposition. Moreover Shaw has
contented himself with pointing out the
evil without suggesting remedy. His
position is not that of the physician
who combats the course of a contagious
disease, but that of the individual who
sticks up a sign upon the house warm
ing we'll people OF the premises. Doubt
less, you will say, the sign serves its
purpose; and so it does
Mrs Waren's long speech to her
daughter in the second act of the play
has beer termed a defense of her call
ing. 1t is not that at all 1t is. primar-
ily an arraignment of societys attitude
toward the social evil i'm its merchant
able form; and, secondarily, an explain
alton of why women take up that mode
of life. Written by George Bernard
Shaw it is, of course, exceedingly, even
eccentricaily. frank. 1t is finely
dramatic speech devoid of the usual
ShaVian epigrams. and gaining in
strength thereby; but it has about as
much effect as an elaborate mathe-
matical demonstration of the sum-
plus equals A.
Is Finely Acted
Whatever one may think of the play
however, and of its suitability for
stage presentation, there can be little
at which to cavil in the manner of
that presentation as it was made last
night at the Los Angeles theater. InI
the role of Mrs Warren Miss Mary
Shaw played with telling effect. She
made Mrs. Warren a woman. not the
painted puppet so often depicted upon
the stage; a woman with Il genuine
love for her daughter, a woman with
the commonness, the Vulgarity that
must have followed such as she
throughout her life. She obtained her
effects quietly. She manifested her art
in innumerable little tricks of manner;
in her quick perception, even in her
costuming of the role. 1t was a fine,
a finished performance.