F.A.N.Y headlines Women in the West End at the Arts Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
INNOVATIVE theatre company, Anonymous Is A Woman, is presenting F.A.N.Y (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) at the Arts Theatre (studio space) from March 15 to April 2, 2016.
Part of Women in the West End, a three week programme featuring performance, new writing, creativity and networking inspired by history, F.A.N.Y will be the headline production.
Five Women. One War. One Purpose. A fascinating tale of comradeship and the ordinary women who did extraordinary things, F.A.N.Y tells the incredible story of the women who drove ambulances from the front line of the bloody battlefield to the nearby hospitals in France.
F.A.N.Y is described as a startling new play about courage, bravery and redemption, and this evocative production immerses audiences in the front-line reality of the Great War from a rarely seen perspective – a woman’s.
Little has been said about these war women. A hundred years after the First World War, now is the time for their story to be heard.
Based on real accounts from the F.A.N.Y records and the Imperial War Museum, F.A.N.Y is inspired by the novel Across The Blood-Red Skies by Robert Radcliffe.
The cast comprises Madeleine Gould, Bips Mawson, Henri Merriman, Leila Sykes and Stella Taylor.
After performing an extract at last year’s Women’s History Network Conference in Worcester to delegates from across the globe, the company has recently completed a tour of the West Midlands as part of the Imperial War Museum’s Centenary Partnership. Venues included The Artrix, Bromsgrove, The Palace Theatre, Redditch, and The Hive, Worcester and a special London performance at the Actor’s Church, Covent Garden.
F.A.N.Y will be Anonymous Is A Woman’s West End debut.
Tickets: £20, £17 concessions – available online at artstheatrewestend.co.uk/.
Times: 7.30pm, with Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2pm and Sunday matinees at 3pm.
Also at the Arts Theatre: NotMoses, written and directed by award-winning film-maker Gary Sinyor (March 10 to May 14, 2016).