In Bernard Shaw's first play, Widowers' House, the question of how we must live is raised by the hero's realisation that his income is derived from slum properties. In this play, written a year later but because of censorship laws not publicly performed until 1924, Miss Vivie Warren is horrified to discover that her fine education and monthly allowance have been financed by her mother's career as a brothel-keeper.
Modern audiences are as likely to applaud Mrs Warren's business acumen as much as sympathise with her assertion that prostitution is a sensible career move for young women whose only other prospects are four shillings a week in a factory and an early death from lead poisoning. But the difficulty with the play is that it is the daughter who is the heroine, and Vivie is a young woman quite capable of making the blood run cold. She has all the certainty of extreme youth and one who finds purity easy because she has never lived. Her final denial of flesh and mother, love and her own chance for motherhood has never seemed like a sacrifice.
Until now. Rebecca Johnson breathes real life and warmth into Vivie, suggesting that in her renunciation Vivie has lost what might have been the better part of herself.
Elsewhere, Denise Black captures the vulgarity of Mrs Warren, but not her allure and Ifan Merdith's wastrel Frank has a seductive charm. But some of the other performances are lazy or as over- emphatic as the design.
Until July 1. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
