About a Piano

By Ali Child & Rosie Wakley on 2 Oct 2014

’All The Nice Girls’ takes an entertaining glimpse at the lives of Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney through the eyes of male impersonator Ella Shields. Starting out in Lena Ashwell’s concert parties for the troops in WW1 the young Farrar and Blaney quickly adapted their classical ‘cello/piano act into a ‘turn’ full of repartee and physical humour.

Household names in the early 1920s Farrar and Blaney had an on and offstage partnership, singing popular love songs of the day to each other in West End Revues and living together openly. At the same time Ella Shields’ Music Hall act was in decline. ‘All The Nice Girls’ imagines her fictitious reaction to the younger pair as they live the starry life of Bright Young Things.

Will their relationship survive the pressures of the age and the conflicting urges to marry and conform or to party wildly into oblivion?