Mrs Warren’s Profession review: 'why does it feel so mechanical?'

Bessie Carter at Vivie in Mrs Warren’s Profession at the Garrick Theatre - (Johan Persson)

Who knows how it worked back then, but George Bernard Shaw was either paid by the word or really bored in the late 1800s because his plays are long. Sometimes someone turns them into a musical - Pygmalion became My Fair Lady - and that helps, but more often than not we just have to suffer the revivals: admire the forward-thinking, the occasionally dazzling verbal flair, the socially switched-on-ness, and endure the long digressions on the finer points of Cambridge’s Tripos examination system.

So why on earth would you want to watch GBS now? Director Dominic Cooke gives us two enticements: one, he’s cut the play massively. Hour forty five straight through. Bang. Second, brothel-keeper Mrs Warren and her prim daughter Vivie are played by real life Imelda Staunton and real life daughter Bessie Carter (who happens to be in Bridgerton).