Every mother should take her daughter(s) to see Shaw's “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall now through July 11.

And everyone who enjoys excellent theatre should see this fine production, starring DC and Broadway favorite Elizabeth Ashley in the title role of the brothel-madam.

Tony-winner Ashley ages so very well, like Shaw’s play.

For anyone who thinks the 1893 play is dated, think again – and it will make you think about so much:
• Mother-daughter love-hate relationship –
         o As Ashley has said, “I have never known any mother-daughter relationship in my life that was not a war much of the time.”
         o And as Shaw wrote, "Youth pardons nothing because it knows nothing."
• Prostitution -- Think Eliot Spitzer, among so many others.
• Marriage as legalized prostitution – Just think about it…
• Women choosing not to marry -- Read especially Shaw’s glorious “Getting Married”.
• Evils of poverty – Been pondering this despite the allegedly recovering economy?
• Respectability –“If you’re going to choose your acquaintances on moral principles, then you’d better leave this country.” England, US, any country... Sir George Crofts is in business/bed with brothel/madam Mrs. Warren, and wants to marry her daughter who may be his own daughter.
• ROI, return on investment – Sir George gets 35 percent return on his investment in Mrs. Warren’s, and his, profession.
• Ah, well, as the divine Mrs. W says, “Lord help the world if everyone did the right thing."

All the actors did the right things almost all the time in this Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) production, directed by Keith Baxter.

Ashley is perfection, as always. She had us at “Yoo hoo”, as she sweeps onto the stage. Her huge hat's ostrich plumes ruffle, just like her vibrant slightly vulgar character ruffles everyones feathers.

Ashley characterizes Mrs. W as “a brassy old broad who’s smart as a whip...I love that she has a ruined heart, but that it still beats.”

Yours will beat faster during the electric, evocative, and provocative final scene between mother and daughter.

As daughter Vivie Warren, Amanda Quaid (actor Randy Quaid’s actual daughter) is a self-admitted “little prig.”

Vivie “would rather open an artery” than become like her mother, “a woman of no purpose, no character.” And that’s before Vivie learns about her mother’s profession. It has supported Vivie quite comfortably, including a Cambridge education with honors, and a charming thatched cottage with English garden in full bloom. (Sets by Simon Higlett are spot-on.)

Had Quaid thawed during the momentary daughter-mother reconciliation, Vivie would have earned the empathy her character deserves, greatly enhancing her complexity, and the complexity of her relationships.

Vivie is the very model of a modern, independent woman. “I don’t care for romance or beauty. I like working and getting paid for it.”

Someone who does care for romance and “Vivums” is Frank Gardner, played delightfully by Tony Roach. But occasionally, Roach’s portrayal is a bit more Bertie Wooster in P.G. Wodehouse than Frank Gardner in G.B. Shaw.

GBS had described Frank Gardner like this: "in spite of having much capactiy and charm, (he) is a cynically worthless member of society..." 

The play, written in 1893, was originally banned from the stage in London the next year. It was not performed again for eight years, and in 1902 one critic called it "revoltingly offensive" and "wholly evil".

It was shut down after only one performance in New Haven in 1905  A few days later, in New York City, police arrested the cast and crew, and charged them with disorderly conduct and "offending public decency". 

After that opening performance in New York, Shaw was termed "an 'Irish Smut Dealer" and his play was called "illuminated gangrene," wrote Michael Holroyd in his three-volume biography "Bernard Shaw".

Shaw wote, in his introduction to "Mrs. Warren's Profession", "...I shall at last persuade even London to take its conscience and its brains with it when it goes to the theatre..."

May Washington be similarly pursuaded, and take also a sense of humo(u)r -- to the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall. 

For more information and tickets, Shakespeare Theatre Company, www.shakespearetheatre.org, Sidney Harman Theatre, 610 F Street NW, Washington, DC. Box Office, 202-547-1122.