ANGELA Bain stepped into the title role of Big Maggie at only five days' notice, and that role as is big as it sounds.

"In the first half Maggie goes off stage two or three times, but in the second she's on there all the time," says Angela, who is now touring the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme production of John B Keane's slice of Irish rural life.

"I was originally playing Mrs Madden, and she only comes along at the end of the play looking for a settlement for her pregnant daughter but is given short shrift by Maggie, as Maggie seems to give everyone!

"Because I had such a small part I wasn't even there for the first week of rehearsals, and then, in the third week, the actress playing Maggie was taken ill. Finding someone available from a pool of Irish actresses to play this big Irish part would have meant the director, Gwenda Hughes, losing another couple of days of rehearsals, so I was asked if I would do it.

"I'd played Mrs Madden's daughter - another small but lovely, gorgeous part - eight years ago so I knew the play well, but now I had the biggest learning challenge of my life. There were moments when I didn't think I'd be able to learn it all but I did!"

Adrenaline took over, says Angela. "I tried everything to learn the lines. Repeating them and repeating them. Taping them. Getting other members of the cast to say them to me. Singing them. Running around the block reciting them."

Big Maggie is Maggie Polpin, a woman striding towards freedom in the 1960s following the death of her philandering lump of a husband. Maggie tightly grabs the reins of the family's farm and shop and the love lives of a feckless brood of grown-up offspring, but in applying the iron grip she risks driving them away. What's more, she finds herself taking on priests, patriarchs and an amorous undertaker.

In Angela's case the 'big' does not refer to her size. "I'm 5ft and a very small build, so I've had a little padding added to make her bigger. 'Big Maggie' is kind of figurative: she's big in attitude and you wouldn't want to cross her," she says.

Just to add to Angela's task of playing a heavyweight Irish role, she is not Irish herself. Indeed she is one of only two cast members who are not from Ireland. "But my grandfather was from County Cavan," she says, switching to a Southern Irish accent to emphasise her family past.

Big Maggie, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, now until October 21. Box office: 01723 370541.