It’s 1914, and a young comic’s jokes are falling flat with the sparse audience at the Kilburn Empire — and that’s before someone yells out: “Why haven’t you joined up, and gone to fight for your country?” But standing in the wings, actor-manager Lena Ashwell isn’t too worried: “It’ll all be over by Christmas,” she says confidently.

Lena was a real-life impresario, and Mikron Theatre tells her story in Troupers, one of two new shows the company is presenting on the canal narrowboat Tyseley. Lena soon realises World War I will not be over by Christmas, and decides her mission is to form a new theat-re company to entertain the troops in France. She encounters ill-con-cealed derision when she pitches her plan at the War Office, but is determined to press ahead. A series of dire — but also hilarious — auditions follow, including a ventriloquist who can’t transfer his voice to his dummy, and a snake charmer whose reptile resolutely refuses to rise from its basket. But eventually she finds the performers she needs.

Writer Maeve Larkin movingly contrasts a bright and bubbly first half with the grim reality of life on the front line after the interval. Lena develops from a gushy luv-vie into a gritty realist — the role expertly performed by Jill Myers. Nicholas Coutu-Langmead, Est-her-Grace Button and John Holt-Roberts are excellent in the other roles. The cast also performs Rebekah Hugh-es’s evocative music with aplomb, in a show that brings an unsung piece of First World War history vividly to life.

Troupers
Touring to various Oxfordshire venues
Until August 19
www.mikron.org.uk