'Mrs. Warren's Profession' still thrilling

What a shocker "Mrs. Warren's Profession" must have been in 1893, when George Bernard Shaw wrote the social satire equating most of Victorian life with prostitution.

In fact, though London censors stopped banning its performances in 1924 and New York cops stopped raiding them by 1907, the play remains a pretty amazing bundle of gutsy, unsentimental insight about life as financial transaction-a revelation in what one character calls "the gospel of getting on."

In other words, there are still thrilling bolts of recognition to be found in this Broadway rarity, even if the Roundabout Theatre Company's adequate production, starring Cherry Jones, is less wonderful than it needs to be. In other words, for starters, it is hard to understand Shaw's wicked and all-important words in this theater, which, for all its comfort and good looks, has a way of smearing articulation (phony British and the real thing), as well as swallowing up the energy of good directors.

And Doug Hughes, who staged Jones in "Doubt," is a very good director. The competent but seldom incendiary cast includes several New York stage pros (Edward Hibbert, Mark Harelik, Michael Siberry), plus the Broadway debuts of enjoyable English actress Sally Hawkins (a favorite of Mike Leigh movies) and an intriguing, risk-taking newcomer named Adam Driver.

Then there is Jones, back onstage after playing Madam President on TV's "24," portraying another kind of madam - the prosperous proprietor of a brothel circuit. She has raised, mostly in absentia, a strong-willed daughter named Vivie (Hawkins), a Cambridge graduate who doesn't know the source of her independent privilege. Three of her mother's friends-and former customers-end up at Vivie's country cottage (designed with hyper-realistic greenery by Scott Pask). As we wonder which man is Vivie's father (think "Mamma Mia!" with smart talk and long dresses), Mrs. Warren wins Vivie over by defending the class necessity of her profession, then loses her by refusing to be ashamed.

Jones could not give a bad performance if paid to do so. By making Mrs. Warren an orange-haired floozy in loud tacky gowns, however, Hughes pushes Shaw's description of her from "fairly presentable" vulgarity to something like Mae West with a Cockney accent. If Vivie has been fooled all these years by this woman, Mrs. Warren didn't get much for her money.