Mrs Warren is like the Victorian Belle Du Jour, though not quite as bitter.

If you need a hefty dose of girl power drama and corsets, I'd highly recommend Mrs Warren's Profession. Starring Felicity Kendal in the title role, and Lucy Briggs-Owen as her quick minded daughter Vivie, this play had me on the verge of tears at the same time as splitting my sides with laughter. Mrs Warren, a notoriously absent mother and successful business woman, returns to England in a vain attempt to obtain a relationship with her daughter, only to find that her little girl has not only grown up, but settled into a way of life very different to that which her mother had intended for her.

I was a tad unsure of Briggs-Owen at first, because she seemed almost too contempory for her surroundings, but I soon warmed to her once the story really kicked off. She is a character who knows exactly what she wants from life, and is certain about absolutely everything except her mother. Of Mrs Warren and her profession Vivie knows next to nothing, and while the modern thinking audience twig within the first few moments (that and we'd just read about Victorian prostitution and feminism in the programme) the rest of the characters take their own sweet time to work it out. This might have something to do with the fact that due to the time it was written (1894) the actual terms of 'the profession' are not ever specified, but obviously implied with coy looks and double entendre.

Banned for almost 30 years after it was written, it isn't hard to see why. It's cheeky and just a little bit naughty, and quite happily justifies the business of prositution. Mrs Warren is unashamed of the success she has made for herself and is proud of her profession, and after hearing her reasons as to why she turned to it when faced with poverty I am inclined to agree with her. The fact that she's played by Felicity Kendal may also help - I find it almost impossible to disagree with that woman.

It's a fine cast; David Yelland, Eric Carte, Mark Tandy and Max Bennett join Kendal and Briggs-Owen and are all rather brilliant at bringing tongue-in-cheek victorian humour to the stage but still make it feel modern and fresh as though it were a slightly risque BBC period drama.

The relationship between Mrs Warren and Vivie is wonderful yet heartbreaking at the same time. Such a vivacious character can surely never hope to easily co-exist with the moral thinker that is her daughter, but it is obvious they both wish it were not so. An honest and heartwarmingly funny depiction of a quite tragic situation, it will make you laugh and (almost) cry, but the moral questions raised are not so dated that they do not ring true in our own modern society. Mrs Warren is, at times, more forward thinking and practical than any one of us, but all that gumption comes at a price.

Running until the 19th of June at The Comedy Theatre near Picadilly Circus in London.