The Green Room, Etcetra, Camden London

The Green Room brings backstage to the audience with an insightful look into the pre-stage preparations of four actresses, swamped in the strewn mess of costumes and dresses, make-up and wigs, they moan, bicker, dream and reveal the joys and woes of their rollercoaster love lives. Meet Truda, Klara, Lisa and Marie, starry-eyed hopefuls taking to the stage in a small repertory, living the dream and dreaming there was more to life.

This witty comedy, written by Arnost Goldflam and translated from Czech to English by director Eva Danicková puts life under the microscope, but the only infestation is hopes of a better role, in work and play. It doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know. The sense of humour is there from start to end, but only falls out in fits and starts, most notably when the deadpan Lisa, brilliantly portrayed by Pamela Parry, tramps on in the third act dressed as a flame. It seems her not so glamorous acting career has taken a turn for the worse. As if she wasn’t angry and bitter enough in the first place, raising her voice to the end of her sentences to vent her frustration.

Karen Burton as Truda plays a thirty-something trying to keep things together on stage whilst suffering the torment of a collapsed marriage behind the scenes. Burton casually flicks through the emotions of her tortuous journey with natural ease and demonstrates accomplished talents as a comic actress with precision timing.

So too, Amy Simpson, superb in the role of Marie who, when we first meet her sweeps in with the buoyancy a winning goal in the last minute of the cup final would give you, only to slump like a fan of the losing team by the end.

Then we have the fly-by-night Klara, a hapless day-dreamer played by Kara McLean with the energy of a dance troupe. She breezes round the stage, powerful, sprightly, sweeping from the chest of drawers on the right to the flowers on the left, always with a smile, yet still shows enough of Klara to tell us her pipe dreams are full of hot air and her prayers will go unanswered.

So all in all, the girls do The Green Room proud. If only the male writer had been as convincing. But then, man’s failure towards the fairer sex is a fundamental point of the play.

The Green Room will be running in the Etcetra in Camden until Sunday 26th September.