Malvern drama is a family affair

Caroline Quentin (Life Begins, Dickensian, Men Behaving Badly) stars as Mrs Warren and Rose Quentin (Doc Martin) as Vivie. They are joined by Simon Shepherd (Peak Practice, Casualty, Chancer) as Sir George Crofts, Matthew Cottle (The Windsors, Game On) as Reverend Gardener, Stephen RahmanHughes (EastEnders) as Mr Praed and Peter Losasso as Frank Gardner. The director is Anthony Banks.

What is Mrs Warren’s profession? Mrs Warren’s daughter Vivie has never really known much about her mother. A sensible young woman, she has enjoyed a comfortable upbringing, a Cambridge education, a generous monthly allowance and now has ambitions to go into Law.

Is it conceivable that her privilege and respectability has been financed from the profits of the world’s oldest profession? How will Vivie react when she finds out the startling truth about her mother’s business empire and that freedom comes at an emotional price?

Shaw’s acid test of a mother-daughter relationship is one of his wittiest and most provocative plays. Written in 1894 but banned for 30 years by a Lord

Chamberlain who found it “immoral and improper” , Mrs Warren’s Profession is a ripe attack on English hypocrisy and its “fashionable morality”.

Caroline Quentin has twice won the British Comedy Award for best TV comedy actress and a special recognition award at the National Television Awards. She has recently starred in Jack Absolute Flies Again at the National Theatre and played Wes in the new Sky series The Larazus Project. Caroline took part in the 2020 season of Strictly Come Dancing with dance partner Johannes Radebe. She has performed on stage at the RSC, National Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Chichester Festival Theatre and in the West End.

Dramatist, literary critic and socialist spokesman, Bernard Shaw was also a freethinker, a supporter of women’s rights and an advocate of equality of income. His prolific literary output also includes Pygmalion, Arms and the Man, Candida, Man and Superman, Heartbreak House and Saint Joan, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Tickets are available from the Malvern Theatres box office on 01684 892277.