Why do we see so little Shaw in London these days? If it is because we think he is a passionless old fossil, Peter Hall's excellent revival of this once-banned play shows just how wrong we are.
This is a play about liberation. The action hinges on the discovery by Vivie Warren that her mother's fortune depends on a chain of European brothels. Far from being revolted, Vivie is secretly intrigued. What finally leads her to reject her mother is Mrs Warren's willingness to play the English game of social pretence. In the tremendous final scene what you see is Vivie cutting the umbilical cord and discovering her own voice in a way that anticipates Wesker's Beatie Bryant over 60 years later.
Along the way Shaw mercilessly exposes the double standards of Victorian England. Sir George Crofts, a pillar of society, lives off his capital investment in European bordellos. The Reverend Samuel Gardner, Mrs Warren's one-time lover, is a pious fraud. And Gardner's son is quite prepared to marry Vivie, even though he turns out to be her half-brother, for the sake of her money. Shaw treats prostitution as a metaphor for a corrupt society.
My one qualm about the play is the character of Vivie. In one sense, she is the forerunner of liberated heroines such as Willy Russell's educated Rita and Wesker's Beatie. But she is also a woman who cries: "I don't believe in circumstances - the people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want." Shaw was hardly to know this, but he was creating an embryonic Thatcher; and there is something a little unnerving about her steely single-mindedness.
Fortunately the Thatcherite echoes are largely dispelled by Rebecca Hall's admirable presentation of Vivie as a spirited, larky girl who realises that freedom carries an emotional price. Brenda Blethyn, resplendent in a purple feathered hat, is also a stunning Mrs Warren. And there is vigorous support from Richard Johnson as a spryly lecherous Sir George Crofts. But the real winner in a deeply satisfying evening is Shaw, who reminds us of his capacity to write drama that is socialist, subversive and funny all at the same time.
· Until January 18. Box office: 0870 901 3356. A version of this review appeared in later editions of yesterday's paper.
