KAREN Dunbar offers a couple of raised eyebrows and a wry grin when asked how she compares to her latest stage character.

And the reaction is not surprising. Karen is starring this week as Winnie in Samuel Beckitt's Happy Days.

Winnie, a lady in her fifties, spends the duration of the play up to her waist in baked earth.

The dirt hole she's trapped in is a metaphor for the life Winnie has to endure. Winnie is in a ded-end relationship, she's married alive to Willie.

And to make matters worse, she knows her best years are behind her.

Winnie is you, isn't she Karen?

"Are you having a laugh," says the comedy star smiling.

"I don't think that Winnie and me have too much in common."

Well, perhaps. But there is one thing; Winnie is interminably cheerful. Even though she describes a life that's pitiful, she somehow manages to see the joy.

Karen too has something of that optimism, the Ayrshire-born actress-comedy star in conversation is bouncier than Tigger.

"I am determined to be upbeat about life," she says in serious voice. "And why not?"

Well, to play Devils' Advocate, Karen, you don't have obvious reasons to be cheerful; growing up in Ayr wasn't a hothouse for creativity. You didn't go to public school and have your fees paid to RADA by advantaged parents.

And you had to work that extra bit harder to achieve success, years of stints in karaoke bars before breaking into the BBC?

"Well, if you're comparing, I don't feel I've had to battle that hard," she contends. "And even if you do get success because of who you are, the privileged background thing has pros and cons.

"What my background has given me is a great resilience."

The former Chewin' The Fat and the Karen Dunbar Show star adds, smiling; "And as I've gotten older I realise what a tremendous amount of love and care I've had from my family.

"It didn't really matter there wasn't hot chocolate running out of the tap. I was always looked after, well fed."

Karen's natural enthusiasm is evident when she talks about Beckitt's play, seemingly featuring a prattling housewife.

But it's really about a woman going through an existentialist crises. Winnie is every woman who's trapped by circumstance, but deals with it.

"She puts a spin on everything. But is she in denial? Maybe. But a hint of denial of what's happening to you is not a bad thing.

"It's how people get by."

Karen had no idea of the work of Beckett before she agreed to taking part in his tragic-comedy.

But she's had great fun learning about the writer who works in imagery and surrealism to present a more vivid reality.

"I'd analyse the a*** out of a sausage roll," she says grinning. "Beckitt uses lots of quotes in the play, quotes from Hamlet for example , and I'd look them up to see the source and then try and work out the significance."

She adds; "I want to say I'm loving this play," Karen says of the piece which is a virtual monologue. (Director Andy Arnold plays Willie; "He has fifty four lines, but he makes all of them count.")

"It's been hard to learn but I memorise scripts by copying them into longhand.

"Somehow, I manage to get it into my brain this way. For some reason this technique works for me."

Paradoxically perhaps, given she's playing a creature who's incessantly upbeat, Karen admits there was a period during rehearsals when she really felt quite low.

"And I think this was because I was identifying so much with the reality my character, a woman who's stuck in a daily grind.

"I think I was going beneath what we see on top and realising what her world was about. Winnie, for example, has a relationship with a man - but are they married, we don't know?

"But what we do know is it has dwindled to a need for companionship under any sort of circumstances.

"Winnie needs Willie in whatever shape or form he comes in."

So she's encased by compromise?

"Could be," she muses. "But she's certainly trapped in middle age, and feels she's in steady decline."

Karen Dunbar, at 44, is certainly not in decline. She works continually in theatre, and in fact is back at the Tron in the summer in David Ireland play Can't Forget About You.

She plays a Glaswegian widow who falls for a young Belfast graduate. And it's most likely the funniest thing that will happen to you all year.

"I've got lots to be cheerful about," says the actress.

She muses; "You know, as you get older, you change. When I was younger I thought jobs or money would make me happy.

"But that's not the case. It's about lots of things."

Like spending time on stage trapped in a mound of earth?

"Exactly," she says, laughing.

€¢ Happy Days, the Tron Theatre, May 15 - 23.