About the Play:

Goodbye, My Fancy is a full-length comedy by Fay Kanin. A congresswoman and former reporter returns to her alma mater to receive an honorary diploma while juggling a long-nursed yen for the college's president with the attentions of a photographer and former colleague. Goodbye, My Fancy is about fighting for love or fighting for your ideals.

Goodbye, My Fancy is about a congresswoman and her misguided impulse to rekindle a college romance with a man who has since become the college president. Congresswoman Agatha Reed is invited back to speak at the college from which she was once expelled because she broke curfew on an all-night date with Professor Pitt, now the college president. Since her wartime experiences in Europe, she has devoted herself to the task of acquainting people with the horrors of war. That is why she has brought a documentary with her to be shown to the young graduates. The movie is considered controversial and anti-war by the trustees, so she has a fight on her hands. Will Professor Pitt, who she remembers as being a person with tremendous fight and integrity, stand up for what is right or bend for what is easy? Or will Agatha take matters into her own hands – as usual? The conflict exposes Professor Pitt as a spineless and irresolute figure, instead of the upstanding and outspoken maverick teacher with whom Agatha thought she had been in love with for so many years. The disenchantment drives her into the arms of a wartime acquaintance who, as a photographer, has come to cover the event. Goodbye, My Fancy is a Broadway romantic comedy classic with serious undertones regarding academic freedom.

Goodbye, My Fancy premiered in 1948 on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre in New York City. Her first try at writing a play, it charmed critics, was a rousing hit, and ran for over a year. The play has been performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 12 female, 8 male

What people say:

"An adult play with laughter on the surface and underneath, a fierce, almost frightening cry for common sense." — New York Journal American

"It is amusing, it is likeable, and it is certainly on the side of the angels." — New York Post

About the Playwright:

Fay Kanin (1917-2013) was an Emmy-winning and Oscar- and Tony-nominated American screenwriter, playwright and producer, who crafted several plays and highly acclaimed scripts for film and television during a career that spanned some 50 years. A self-proclaimed feminist, she brought an energetic and assertive female voice to her work. One of her proudest moments was the night of the 1980 Academy Awards, when a huge worldwide audience saw that the president of AMPAS was a woman; indeed, she was the first full-term female president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences from 1979 to 1983, for the maximum of four consecutive one-year terms, during which she became a lifelong advocate on behalf of film preservation.