You realise you had Tony Soprano for an auntie

WE all have cousins we’d sooner swim across the Clyde naked – in winter – to avoid than acknowledge in the street.

We may be connected by DNA and ancestry but not by experience, values and sensibility.

But what happens if circumstances throw us into the river with those we’d rather avoid?

Ann Marie Di Mambro’s new play Rachel’s Cousins explores this theme and features Rachel (Shonagh Price), a professional, woman who also happens to be a practising snob.

“Rachel has gone to private school and become a lawyer,” says actress Julie Coombe, who plays Rachel’s cousin Marian.

“Her mother has married up in life.”

Julie adds, grinning; “As a result, she sees our branch of the family as a holding pen for Jeremy Kyle.”

Rachel’s life changes however after she contracts cancer and is told she has the BRACCA2 gene, which means an increased risk of breast cancer. Her doctor informs her she really has to let her cousins know about her condition and advise them to get tested.

But Rachel fears her cousins will begin to take a wrecking ball to her life. “That’s the dilemma,” says Julie. “We also learn that Marian has had a hard life of a different sort. Marian, the oldest of the cousins, is fabulous Glasgow. A lionesses. Yet, beneath the surface there is a real connection with Rachel.”

The world of family schism is not something Julie is unfamiliar with.

“I’ve not been in the most magic terms with my cousins since my mum died,” she admits.

“And problems come about when the generation above you go because they were the ones who held the relationship together. But Facebook can help to reconnect.”

She adds, grinning: “Having said that there are people in every family you just don’t talk to. And it’s only later on you realise you had Tony Soprano for an auntie.”

Julie grew up in Glasgow’s east end without any connection to acting. Ironically, it was innate clumsiness which took her into dance, which revealed a real love for performance.

“I was a clumsy child, always falling over, bumping into things, and my mother took me to the doctor early on, wondering if there were something wrong with me.

“But he reckoned I just needed practice in where to put my feet so I was sent to dance classes. I studied ballet and highland dance. And I loved it.”

Julie was drawn to drama at high school. And when the family moved to the west coast she signed up for am dram at Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre .

Buoyed by the experience, she applied for drama college and was “stunned” to discover she was accepted at the first attempt by Queen Margaret College in Edinburgh.

However, Julie’s professional career was forged back in Glasgow.

“One day I saw an ad for an ensemble for a sketch show, running at the Stand Comedy Club.

“It was one of the best and most pivotal moments of my career. Suddenly, I was performing in front of lots of TV executives, and got real comedy attention, landing TV and radio shows such as the Live Floor Show and Millport.”

Julie went on to star alongside Carol Smillie in The Vagina Monologues, for producer Michael Harrison – which also proved to be a life changer.

“I changed a couple of little bits in the show and it was well received and Michael then came up with the title for a new show, Hormonal Housewives. And he suggested I write it. I asked what it should be about and he said ‘Write what you like’.”

And she did. And the show has run over four major British tours. “We’re hoping it will go out again next year,” she says with a very pleased smile.

Julie is currently co-writing a TV sitcom, Thorns, with her husband. And there are also hopes of a return with her most recent stage production, football comedy The Pieman Cometh.

Meantime, the focus is on far-from kissing cousins. “But will they kiss and make up?” says Juilie, enigmatically.

* Rachel’s Cousins, featuring Richard Conlon, Isabelle Joss Shonagh Price and Julie Coombe, Oran Mor, until Saturday.