Mrs. Warren’s Profession

George Bernard Shaw didn’t shrink from a fight. The ardent socialist not only agitated for social change through his writings, but helped create the leftist movement that would become Britain’s Labour Party. Even in a career such as his, though, this comedy stands apart, because the profession in question was prostitution. Incredibly provocative when Shaw wrote it in 1894, Mrs. Warren shocked Victorian audiences with its title character, a good mother who made her career choice because the other options as a poor single woman were even more degrading—and that lack of opportunity for a better life was what really made Shaw mad. The play was such a hot property it had to wait 11 years and cross the ocean to New York before it could be staged. Even then, the cast was arrested after the first performance, and it didn’t debut in England for another two decades. Somehow, we doubt Mrs. Warren is any less challenging or relevant today. Guthrie Theater, (612) 377-2224, www.guthrietheater.org