| Nancy Anderson in rehearsal for Fanny Hill. | |
| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Valentine’s Day sees the opening of the Off-Broadway musical Fanny Hill, which stars Nancy Anderson in the title role.
Previews for the new musical at the York Theatre Company began Feb. 1. Directed by James Brennan with musical direction by Stan Tucker, the limited engagement of Ed Dixon’s Fanny Hill is scheduled to play through March 26.
The Fanny Hill cast also features Patti Allison, David Cromwell, Michael J. Farina, Gina Ferrall, Adam Monley, Emily Skinner, Christianne Tisdale and Tony Yazbeck. The creative team includes Michael Bottari and Ronald Case (scenic and costume design) and Phil Monat (lighting design).
Fanny Hill is based on the John Cleland novel and, according to press notes, is “the story of a beautiful but poor country girl who travels to London to make her fortune and ends up making a great deal more. . . the army, the navy and most of Parliament! In the face of big city trials and tribulations, our indefatigable heroine ends up giving new meaning to the expression ‘making it’ when she becomes the foremost practitioner of the world’s oldest profession.”
Nancy Anderson was most recently seen on Broadway as Eileen Sherwood in the revival of Wonderful Town. She made her Broadway debut as Mona in A Class Act and starred in the West End production of Kiss Me, Kate as Lois/Bianca. Off-Broadway she was seen in Jolson & Co. and Fables in Slang. Anderson’s regional theatre credits include Fanny Hill, Nicolette and By Jeeves.
The York Theatre Company is located in St. Peter’s Theatre, just east of Lexington Avenue on East 54th Street. Tickets, priced $55, are available by calling (212) 868-4444 or by visiting www.smarttix.com. For more information go to www.yorktheatre.org.
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Considered the first “erotic” novel, the witty tale was written in 1749 while Cleland was in debtor´s prison in London, and it has also gone on to become a byword for the battle of censorship of erotica. After the book was first published, The Church of England asked the British Secretary of State to stop the progress of the book, “an open insult upon Religion and good manners, ” and as a result, Cleland was arrested. Nonetheless, copies of the book were sold underground and the book eventually made its way to the United States where, in 1821, it was banned for obscenity. In 1963, G. B. Putnam published the book, and it was once again banned for obscenity. The publisher challenged the ban in court, and in a landmark decision in 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Memoirs v. Massachusetts that the banned novel did not meet the for obscenity. The novel is still banned in Australia.
