BELINDA Coghlan and Alison Fleming gave excellent, bittersweet performances in the latest production at the Wilmslow Green Room Theatre.

Belinda and Alison played a vicar’s wife and an aspiring actress respectively in two of Alan Bennett’s first series of dramatic monologues, Talking Heads.

Belinda played Susan in Bed Among The Lentils, and superbly evoked the aching sadness of a woman who seeks solace from her unhappiness in alcohol and the arms of an Asian grocer.

Her performance is shot through with shafts of Bennett’s wistful humour, and Belinda cleverly brought out the pathos of the tragedy unfolding before us.

Alison played the part of Lesley in Her Big Chance, an ironic title which hints at her naivety and self-delusion.

The growing chasm between her rose-tinted dreams and the sordid reality of her role in a soft porn film is painful to watch, with Lesley seemingly oblivious to what she is becoming involved in.

The strength of Bennett’s writing lies in his ability to empathise with his characters and refusal to judge those whose lives he depicts, and the roles were immortalised by Maggie Smith and Julie Walters when the plays were shown on TV to great acclaim in the late 1980s, Maggie Smith being BAFTA-nominated.

The Green Room plays were staged readings because of the short time the cast had to rehearse their lines, after the scheduled production, Kafka’s Dick, also by Bennett, was unable to go ahead because of personal and medical problems experienced by some of the cast.

Despite the fact that Belinda and Alison referred to their scripts on occasions it didn’t distract or detract from the quality of their performances, which deserve great praise in view of the need to switch to new plays late in the day.

The monologues were directed by John Chidgey, and the stage manager was Celia Bonner.