A HIT at last year's Edinburgh Festival and runaway success at the New York Irish Festival earlier this year, the bitter-sweet, one-woman tour de force that is Two Sore Legs opens at the Grand Opera House next week.
And reprising the role she has made her own – and which fits as snugly as her character's infamous fur coat – is Carrickfergus actress Maria Connolly who plays the scandal-ridden Bridget.
Set in Belfast in the 1950s/60s, the play recounts the true story of playwright Brenda Murphy's own mother Bridget, a young Butlin’s redcoat with six children by a married man – who lived nearby with his 'real' family.
Despite never having met the woman, Connolly feels she knew Bridget instinctively from her first read-through of the script when she could hear her voice "speaking to me from the page".
With that level of intimacy, she found it easy to adopt the protagonist's mannerisms, and, most impressingly of all, according to Murphy, she even started to look like her mother.
"That would be her fur coat," Connolly laughs down the phone. "It lives in my attic and must inspire me. It's very warm and heavy on stage, and people will say, 'How do you stick it, what with having to wear the wig too?'
"The funny thing is it's not a wig at all; it's my real hair – I think I must just have big hair."
She is speaking on her phone from outside a leisure centre in Carrickfergus, the Co Antrim town where she lives with partner Jeff and sons Logan (11) and Ryan (8), ready for one of her regular swims which "mentally prepares" her for a punishing run of performances.
"I find that for a role like Bridget, which is emotionally driven, swimming helps me stay on top of myself, mentally and physically," she explains.
Connolly, who as a child wanted to become an opera singer like her father, has an incredible level of commitment to her craft, to the extent that a few years ago she "hobbled" out of her hospital bed, following surgery for appendicitis, in time for 'curtain-up'.
"I was recovering six days before the show and everybody was saying, 'You can't do it, you can't walk'," she recalls, "but in my head, I heard the voices of people at the leisure centre shouting, 'You can do it, you can do it' – and I did.
"Bridget had an ability to get on with it, despite the abuse she suffered – sometimes it's too easy to think yourself out of something instead of just doing it."
The 43 year-old, who has appeared in numerous theatre and television roles, including the BBC's popular Line of Duty, since graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, says the play's success is simply down to Murphy's "amazing" writing.
It is a skill Connolly is learning to perfect herself, encouraged by last year's success of Mabel, a play she penned (and starred in) based on the life of Lady Mabel Annesley who lived in Castlewellan Castle during the 1800s.
"We were on a caravan holiday in Castlewellan Park and I came across a plaque honouring this little-known woman who lived in this castle," she says. "The kids and I were wandering through the castle gardens, pretending to be Mabel, and I suddenly thought, I want to write about her.
"The play was staged by the Kabosh Theatre Company and it was performed in the castle itself which was amazing, because people never really get a chance to see behind the walls."
She has recently been writing the "finishing touches" (again, in the family caravan) for her latest work The White Witch will be unveiled at the CS Lewis Festival in November.
A passionate Lewis fan, it is a project Connolly is hugely excited about: "I felt as close to Mabel as I did to Bridget and now I am playing this really evil character, which will very different," she enthuses.
"She is truly evil so I have cushioned her with a little humour. A sense of humour is always needed, in life and in the theatre.
"I had a really funny experience about three years at the Baby Grand in the Opera House when even a guide dog seemed to wag his tail at the funny bits – and whine at the sad bits. The audience was enthralled; it was hilarious."
:: Two Sore Legs, staged by Greenshoot Productions, runs at the Grand Opera House from October 3-8. (goh.co.uk)
