Playwright Peter Quilter is not exactly a household name, but he probably should be.

After all, his play about Judy Garland, End of the Rainbow led to  the movie adaptation  Judy, which won a best actress Oscar for Renee Zellweger,  and Glorious! his comedy about the delightfully awful American singer Florence Foster Jenkins, has been staged all around the world.

Now Canberra Rep is presenting his play-about-acting in a production directed by veteran Aarne Neeme, with Liz St Clair Long in the leading role, Lydia, and the costumes by Anna Senior.

As the title suggests,  it focuses on the fragile world of the theatre, where truth and illusion come dangerously close together.

Neeme tells me when we catch up for coffee that he discovered the play by accident and thought it would be perfect for an audience fascinated by what goes on backstage – that sounded to him exactly like the Canberra Rep audience and Rep agreed.

But while he and the cast are having an awful lot of fun with the theatrical elements, the play, he says, succeeds because it’s human.

“As with  many of Chekhov’s plays,” he tells me, “The Actress is a modern tragi-comedy.”

Leading lady Lydia (St Clair Long) is about to make her stage farewell. Increasingly aware that even stars like her are usually jettisoned for younger actresses, a new relationship has surfaced with a wealthy older man (Saban Berrell) who can offer her a good life in Switzerland.

But, Neeme says, because she’s an actress, we don’t exactly know if she is “playing” the new relationship and how much of it is real.

The play alternates between the dressing room and the stage, heightening the contrast between the real and the unreal, but which is which?

Just to complicate the plot, Lydia’s matinée idol ex-husband (Rob de Fries) doesn’t want her to move — there’s still a bit of sexual frisson between the pair — and nor does her daughter by that marriage (Kate Harris).

So, will she or won’t she go? You’ll have to be there to find out.

In tragi-comedy, Neeme says, you need to have very well-rounded characters and in The Actress there are terrific parts for two men and five women, allowing some fun with the bitchiness and putdowns of the female characters. All have different ambitions related to Lydia, so the play provides great acting opportunities but also candid moments.

With the character parts, you laugh because they are ridiculous, Neeme says.

Among them is  The Agent, (Jane Ahlquist) who lives off Lydia, so is keen to get her to change your mind.

There’s also The Manager, (Jazmin Skopal) a young woman with little natural feeling for the theatre and a dismissive attitude to it – it’s just a job.

A wonderful part is that of The Dresser (Sally Rynveld) who has been with Lydia for many years and has become her confidante.

A high point for Lydia, Neeme says is actually a piece of Chekhov, where she plays Madame Ranevsky farewelling The Cherry Orchard from the play of the same name.

“Revealing and touching,” he says.

The Actress, Canberra Repertory Theatre, Acton, opens on Friday, May 2 (preview) to May 18.