THE advice given to new authors is to 'write what you know'.

That is what actress Imogen Stubbs has done in this her first play and it works very well.

We Happy Few is a moving, often sentimental, warm tribute to the Osiris Players, a group of women who travelled the country during the Second World War taking Shakespeare to the masses and helping to remind people what they were fighting for.

The play is at its funniest, and much of it is very funny, when Ms Stubbs is writing about those things which go wrong behind the scenes, and sometimes on stage, during a production.

It's not often you laugh out loud at Macbeth!

In trying to reflect the impact of war, some of the events which effect her fictional Artemis Players are sometimes a little contrived, but the characters are well drawn and a talented cast make the most of the opportunity.

If the first half of the play could benefit from being a little shorter, its rousing conclusion leaves you looking forward to more.

Although often more sombre, the second half seems to fly along as we learn more about the women who make up the group and there are some genuinely shocking revelations.

In her programme notes Ms Stubbs makes the observation that a new generation now seems to feel a sense of history is an "encumbrance", that it is "moving forward armed with incredible technology, but with an alarming lack of humility or identity."

This is an intelligent play which has much to say to that younger generation in Britain about who we are, but I fear too many don't want to listen.

We Happy Few continues until November 15.

Nick Howells