The Play's The Thing

Posted by Colin Harvey Oct 25, 2009

We went to see George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession last night. I'm not a great fan of GBS --a typically pompous, portentous Victorian-- but that's probably a reflection of how much society's changed since the play's first performance in 1893. The eponymous profession is prostitution, but you'd have struggled to tell that from the dialogue. It sounded more as if she was guilty of running a chain of hotels.

But whatever the play's drawbacks it wasn't helped by the incident to one poor woman about twenty feet away in the row in front of us.

A man stood up, people began whispering and talking, and then he climbed over the seats to get to the exit (the Theatre Royal has very few exits, so people have to shuffle along -- or in the case of an emergency do what he did). An usher appeared, and the woman began crying out, to a soundtrack of whispers and "sshh!" from several irate people around us. I was trying to focus on the play, but when there's more going on in the audience than on-stage, it's hard to concentrate.

The woman had suffered a stroke and needed to be taken to hospital. What haunts me --as someone so scared of heights that even the prospect of looking straight down the three floors (or about thirty feet) is a challenge-- is the image of the woman being lifted like a parcel by those around her over the side rail at the edge of the seats toward the exit.

Bad enough to suffer the shock and terror of a stroke, but to find oneself being lifted bodily in the darkness when there is a sheer drop nearby must be absolutely terrifying. I only hope that someone was whispering reassurances as they did it, and that she was able to understand what they were doing and why.

Of course the play's the thing --or is it that the show must go on?-- and the actors seemed oblivious of the whispers in the darkness overhead. But I shall rarely think of GBS again without remembering that poor woman.