Channelling Jimmy Kranke and Charles Bronson

One minute the Irish actress will be on stage pretending to be a nine year-old boy.

And fifteen minutes later she’ll be appearing in a very different play, as a middle-aged woman.

“Yes, you couldn’t plan for this sort of life,” she says, grinning.

“But when I saw these plays being performed in Ireland by the writer Clare Dowie I really wanted to do them. And Oran Mor seemed the perfect venue.”

The first of the plays, A***hammers, tells the story of a little boy whose grandfather has disappeared.

It transpires that granddad’s missing is very easily explained. However, the boy’s imagination runs riot. He thinks what he calls Ar**hammers is something mystical and wonderful and that supernatural powers are involved.

“Yes, he now wants to have A***hammers,” says Cora, so he can go off to some strange place.

“And all of his friends desperately want to have A***hammers as well.”

Is it about the boy coming to terms with loss, about trying to remain a child, and giving himself reason to do so?

“Yes, all of that,” says Cora, who appeared at Oran Mor two years ago in Fred and Alice, the poignant play in which appeared as half of a couple with mental health issues.

“It’s about what can happen when a child is confused and his imagination takes off. It’s a very poignant little play.”

Bonfire Night, on the other hand, says Cora, is ‘complete madness.’

“It’s a very dark comedy,” she says of the play which features a middle-aged woman, Claire, whose mother has been killed by a drunk driver.

“The driver is banned for a year but the daughter feels justice hasn’t been done and decides to take things into her own hands.

“She gets herself a gun and becomes a very unlikely vigilante.”

How does Cora switch from being a Jimmy Krankie-like creature to the middle-aged, female version of Charles Bronson?

“That’s a very good question,” she says, grinning.

“You need to have a different costume for both pieces so the audience don’t assume there is a content link.

“But there isn’t much time at all to go from one to the other.

“The costume is set up in such a way I can run off stage and slip into it.”

She adds, grinning; “The secret is in the preparation, and having shoes you can just slip into.

“And of course there is a there is music playing at the end of the first play, to give a little bit of atmosphere.”

Cora worked in sports science for several years before moving on to acting.

“But I did play the character of the Alien in the nativity play when I was seven or eight,” she throws in, grinning.

That’s an interesting take on the story of the Baby Jesus, Cora?

“We had a teacher with a sense of humour,” she says.

Cora was torn between a career in sport or drama, but sport seemed the best bet.

And she went on to have real success in sports science, working in Liverpool and going on to study for a PhD.

But back home in Ireland on holiday she went along to her local drama group - and was seduced.

Cora took a year out of work to pursue a drama career and never looked back, acting and setting up her own production company.

“At times I manage to combine both,” she says of the disciplines.

“We do a children’s puppet show for example, and it deals with healthy eating and exercise.

“And the next project we’re working on is a new piece about a famous Irish runner, and we’ll have treadmills on the stage.

“Hopefully this will be able to combine a bit of my past life and present life, bringing in physiology.”

However, the writer John Sheehy has told me at one point there will be a bucket of ice on stage in which I’ll have to immerse my feet.”

She adds, grinning; “It’s well seen writers don’t do as they write.”

Cora smiles when asked if she could ever have imagined one day she’d be on stage playing both a small boy and a vigilante, and soon be dipping her feet in freezing water.

“Never!” she says, laughing. “But I’m having a great time. And to play two such different characters on the Oran Mor stage will be fantastic.”

*A***hammers and Bonfire Night, Oran Mor, until Saturday.