Mrs Warren’s Profession (in selected cinemas from October 23) is one of Shaw’s ‘Plays Unpleasant’ and it’s an extraordinary play in which a mother and daughter have to come to terms with the fact that their comfortable lives are grounded on prostitution, and the comedy – which is always there as a twist or a grin – has to cope with the objective heartlessness of a world that allows an enterprising woman either to starve or be a jumped-up whore. Now we have a broadcast from London’s Garrick Theatre with Imelda Staunton as Mrs Warren and her real-life daughter Bessie Carter as the girl who turned herself into a wrangler, a mathematical conqueror of the Cambridge tripos, for a bet. If Bessie Carter is utterly formidable as the daughter, perfectly credible in her lack of compromise, Imelda Staunton is staggering in what must be one of the greatest incarnations of the role of the madam the stage has ever seen.

Yes, she’s the Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd in the recording with Michael Ball and we have seen her in Harry Potter as the unlovable Dolores Umbridge and as the last incarnation of the late Queen in The Crown but this is a dazzling performance and a heartbreaking one and no less dazzling for its complete lack of sentimentality.

Staunton, speaking in modified but still unmistakable Cockney, outlines to her tough-minded daughter that she can’t really say who her father is. Meanwhile a chap called Praed (Sid Sagar), one Sir George Crofts (Robert Glenister) and a clergyman (Kevin Doyle) sniff around the tough calculating daughter for what her genealogy might be as if the footprints of a possible incest were a mere inconvenience.

In the first half with extraordinary force Staunton narrates the story of her rise into success as if it were a necessary crucifixion and in the second half she makes clear to Vivie how she has sustained an empire of call-girls. It is the grandest kind of performance because it counts the cost of every last shred of moral justification. Staunton’s body is tiny and her voice should by rights be tinny but she turns it into the earth-shattering voice of a mother who has been spat on and degraded by the one human being she has cherished and has looked to be cherished by. This is a tragic performance of the first rank and everyone should beg, borrow or steal to see it.

Staunton’s performance is all the more piteous and all the more terrifying because it co-exists with the self-possessed crispness of a woman who appears to have transcended the cloak-trailing and jewellery, the opera-going and the glamour and glitter of class. She has sacrificed everything, in her way, for love and yet she knows what slime and compromise she has built her castle of air upon.

It is a devastating performance and it provokes that line from Hopkins, the greatest Victorian poet, ‘But we dream we are rooted in earth – Dust!’ There is the abiding terror of contemporary theatre that we will have lost the idiom that can bring alive these very great plays of 130 or so years ago but the sheer goddess-like evocation of fury and grief that characterises Imelda Staunton’s performance belies this through every squawk and bleat of what she does with her small voice and tiny body.

She is by rights (and in terms of natural equipment) a character actress but this performance in its superhuman mastery of technique – which mirrors in its way the all but impossible effort by which Mrs Warren has made her way in the world – is a thing of wonder.

And so is Bessie Carter who is her mother’s daughter but who wields her moral certitude like a battle-axe. This is a very fine performance indeed both in its steely intelligence and its youthful blindness to the reasons the heart must always have. This is a mighty fortress erected to a god of justice and it makes for a magnificent mother/daughter pairing.

How Shaw manages this intimate womanly pas de deux in the pits of the desolation that follows rejection with great sprinklings of audacious comedy is evidence of what a virtuoso playwright he was. We learn who Vivie’s father is and we see the death of her great flirtation with Frank Gardner (Reuben Joseph).

How in the name of God Shaw managed this light-heartedness in the midst of the delineation of exploitation is simply evidence of the vastness of his dramatic talent. The supporting cast is superb – especially Glenister’s crusty characterisation as Sir George Crofts the wooer – and Dominic Cooke’s direction is elegant and traditional at the same time. The chorus of young women in white who crowd the shadows of the action are a gentle but striking inflection punctuating the end of each act without any hysteria but with an implicit sense of what is at stake.

Chloe Lamford’s set and costumes are superb and Jon Clark’s lighting creates a surround effect as if to indicate a whole globe of what may be in store for the jeunes filles en fleurs. Everything about this production is measured except for the desecration at its centre. Mrs Warren is the supreme anti-heroine for the creator of Major Barbara and Eliza Doolittle and Christopher Shutt’s sound design highlights Staunton’s pain as well as her scorn.

Bernard Shaw, the Irishman, was the contemporary of Oscar Wilde but he outlived him by fifty years. My Fair Lady six years after his death gave a new lease of life to his genius and it’s significant how many of his plays were filmed.

Uncle Vanya is the subject of a Red Stitch seminar for actors and theatre students by Sarah Goodes on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 November.

The legendary Uncle Vanya in the early-1960s had Laurence Olivier as Astrov, Michael Redgrave as Vanya, Joan Plowright as Sonya and Dame Sybil Thorndike as the Nurse.

Louis Malle (no less) filmed it as Vanya on 42nd Street with Wallace Shawn as Vanya and Julianne Moore. Peter Carroll and Geoffrey Rush did it with the STC in 1992.

Dean Bryant in his 2026 Malthouse season – which includes Sarah Goodes and Kat Stewart doing Break of Day – has Christie Whelan Browne in All About Eve. Hard to know how she’ll go with Joseph Mankiewicz but what a Shavian she would make.