Reviews for Fanny's First Play

The average rating for Fanny's First Play based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-04-14 00:00:00 Annalisa Loeffler I had never heard of this satire by Shaw before. I did read the preface, which I normally skip or read afterwards, and am glad I did so as certain aspects of the play were much funnier knowing Shaw had published this play anonymously. This play features a "play within the play". The 'inner' play is a spoof on the comedy-of-manners social satire such as Oscar Wilde wrote; it is about 2 middle-class families each of which have parents striving to maintain respectability and/or morality after suddenly discovering their child has been in jail after shenanigans on Boat Race Night. The 'outer' play is a satire on playwrights (including Shaw himself) and drama critics. I was amused by both the 'inner' and 'outer' plays but some aspects of the humor in the 'outer' play were clearly aimed at contemporary critics of whom I have no information so my guess is it was funnier at the time it was first produced (1911). I knocked off ½ star due to the poor editing on this Kindle edition -- almost all of the apostrophes were missing (for example: hes instead of he's), which was quite annoying. Also for some reason, certain vowels were left out of contractions (havnt instead of haven't; arnt instead of aren't). I read this in the omnibus The Plays of Shaw.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-25 00:00:00 Darlene Fromhart A charming, light social comedy; a satire on suburban middle-class notions of respectability and morality presented as a play-within-a-play. Apparently this was written & rushed into rehearsal quickly as it had to take the stage early after a commercial flop by Ibsen ended its run prematurely. A large part of the comedy is strictly topical - Shaw originally staged this as by "Anonymous", mirroring the fictional playwright, whose identity is kept from the (stage) critics. In the framing play, the critics pontificate about Ibsen, Pinero, Granville Barker and Shaw himself; and apparently the critics themselves were based on real drama critics of the time. The loss of topicality makes the comedy tricky to stage now - as does the somewhat dated morality theme. A pity because the whole thing has a quite light and frothy appeal. This had the longest initial run of any of Shaw's plays.