Fanny's First Play

Fanny's First Play
Written by	George Bernard Shaw
Date premiered	19 April 1911
Place premiered	Little Theatre in the Adelphi, London
Original language	English
Subject	Two respectable families learn to cope with wayward children
Genre	satirical comedy
Setting	A country house; residences in Denmark Hill

Fanny's First Play is a 1911 play by George Bernard Shaw. It was first performed as an anonymous piece, the authorship of which was to be kept secret. However, critics soon recognised it as the work of Shaw. It opened at the Little Theatre in the Adelphi in London on 19 April 1911 and ran for 622 performances.^[1] The mystery over the authorship helped to publicise it. It had the longest run of any of Shaw's plays. A second production opened on Broadway on September 16, 1912 for 256 performances. The play toured the provinces in England in the same year.

It features a play within a play. The framing play is a satire of theatre critics, whose characters were based upon Shaw's own detractors, in some cases being caricatures of real critics of the day.^[2] The main play is a pastiche of the drawing room comedies in vogue at the time.