Shaw's 'Profession' is as brilliantly shocking as ever

STOCKBRIDGE -- My, but they do go on, the characters that George Bernard Shaw set in motion to act out his polemical debates about the perils of capitalism and the place of women in an evolving society. Dry enough for you? The Berkshire Theatre Festival production of "Mrs. Warren's Profession" is anything but, thanks to a stellar cast and Anders Cato's sprightly direction.

A century after its abortive American premiere on Broadway in 1905 (opening night ended in a flurry of arrests), the 1894 script has lost none of its power to shock, even if, by now, the basics of the plot line have become common knowledge: In the course of a leisurely day in the country, "Vivie Warren," a smart, no-nonsense young modern fresh out of Cambridge, learns the source of the funds that have supported her to date. It seems that her mysterious, hitherto seldom-seen mother -- a distant, glamorous figure who lives abroad -- is a madam.

It's a casting coup of the highest order that the two leads -- Xanthe Elbrick (who recently shone on Broadway in the short-lived "Coram Boy") and Lisa Banes (of lengthy and impressive film, stage, and TV credits) -- should so strikingly resemble each other, with their noble brows and sharp, intelligent features. It's even more of a feat how brilliantly each carries off her respective role, and how well they interact.

Elbrick shows us a young go-getter who's practical to a fault and utterly lacking in romantic illusions -- yet capable of harboring a playful fondness for the young ne'er-do-well next door (Randy Harrison of "Queer as Folk," summoning some of the ludic qualities that made him such a superb "Amadeus" at BTF last season). It's not just Vivie's Hulk-like handshakes that wound (while amusing); she has an adamantine heart, and her mother must go to histrionic lengths in hopes of touching it.

Or is Mrs. Warren merely pouring on the Victorian melodrama, with the goal of collecting on the loyalty she feels is her due? Banes plays the ambiguity exquisitely. She's a wonder to observe as Mrs. Warren's veneer of civility starts to fray, and her accent, so carefully cultivated, reveals hints of her working-class origins, like brass peeking through silver plate.

Carl Sprague's set for the scenes proper is minimalist to a fault. The set changes actually provide more visual interest -- though Cato's device of having theater apprentices "act" the mise en scene like robotic factory girls (work whistles and projected slides underscore the allusion) seems overly schematic, if apropos. We get it: He's highlighting Shaw's underlying argument that there's no such thing as clean money -- that someone out there is suffering to afford us the leisure in which to contemplate the finer points of morality (should it even exist) and the purpose and meaning of life.

But how smartly Shaw plays the game! His suggestion that holy matrimony itself might represent a socially sanctioned form of prostitution uncannily anticipated feminism's second wave -- while posing the conundrum much more bluntly and boldly than the first (still underway in his day) would ever have dared.

The issues up for analysis here have lost none of their immediacy, and in the hands of truly skillful actors and an insightful director, they burst into crackly, provocative life.

Musty? Not for a minute.