Written in 1893, George Bernard Shaw's morality play "Mrs Warren's Profession" was so scandalous at the time, it was banned by the Lord Chamberlain and not performed publicly in London until 1925.

The writer's "sin", said Susannah Clapp in The Observer , was to make his protagonist a former prostitute and "brothel-keeper who unrepentantly profits from her trade" – and fails "either to kill herself or to melt into sentimental gold-heartedness" when exposed. Like so much of Shaw's work, "Mrs Warren's Profession" is highly verbose, but for this production, director Dominic Cooke has hacked away at the "repetitions, Shavian curlicues" and so on, to liberate "the drama's heart".

It's a "sensuous, smart staging" of a "problem play", agreed Alice Saville in The Independent – featuring a "ma

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