WHEN an actor plays a character much older than themselves, it certainly helps when they can bring a degree of life experience to the role.

Thankfully, Anni Domingo has so much you'd need a Pickford's van to deliver it to the doors of Oran Mor this week.

Anni stars in The Last Bloom alongside Cleo Sylvestre in a play by Jamaican writer Amba Chevannes which tells of two little old ladies of very different dispositions who clash in a nursing home.

(Think of The Odd Couple, with black women in the Felix/Oscar roles and set in Jamaica and you'll get the picture.)

Anni's personal history certainly indicates she's had the life experience to pull off what is a very demanding role, with Cynthia, the rather more privileged of the ladies, suffering memory loss.

Anni grew up in London, but at the age of four her parents decided to return to their birth place, Sierra Leone.

"We were happy in London," she recalls, "but one day on a bus my older sister made the remark that my dad wasn't black - he was English - and my parents decided we should move to Sierra Leone, and grow up in an African culture."

Anni, whose father ran a shoe-making company, found the new culture to be bewildering.

"Well, I couldn't speak the language," she says, smiling. "And I remember when I was sent to nursery school, mats were spread out in the afternoon for the kids to have a nap on.

"But I refused to lie down on the floor, and I remember saying none of the other children should have to do it either."

It was a case of different sensibilities, and about re-learning.

But as Anni grew up she knew she'd leave Sierra Leone and come back to the UK.

"I always knew I wanted to act. And I had been performing in little shows since the age of three.

"My mother and father were ballroom dancing experts and they had a TV and radio show in which they taught ballroom dancing. So I was always hanging around studios. It was a world I wanted to become part of."

Anni applied to drama school in London, acting out roles with her mum, recording them on tape and sending them to the college.

"That's how I got accepted," she says of her performance from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

"But my mother was offered a place as well, which wasn't surprising; she was a frustrated but talented actress who'd done lots of am-dram and TV over the years."

On leaving drama college, Anni worked consistently.

"I've never gone a year without a job," she says. "Yet, at the the same time it's never been easy for black actors. On television for example, you may get to play the odd assistant attorney but there aren't a lot of parts. Men seem to have it a little easier though."

Anni Domingo is however not the type to waste free time. The mother-of-three also writes plays, novels and short stories.

And she works a magistrate. Does this offer plenty of real-life stories which can be re-written as fiction.

"Oh, it certainly does," she says grinning.

Anni, who lives in Cambridgeshire, won't have any problems playing a little old lady.

"When I began acting I used to play a lot of younger characters, but then I moved on to landing the older parts so I'm used to changing my age.

"In fact, I've even played boys over the years on radio, because I have quite a deep voice."

Anni is delighted to be working alongside Cleo, who plays the cantankerous Myrtle.

"We've been friends since we met in London in the 60s," says Anni. "And we've worked together in the past, but not since the 70s.

"It's odd, but great to be getting together in Glasgow."

Anni won't say what happens to Cynthia and Myrtle, but with Cynthia having Alzheimers' the relationship is especially problematic.

"It's a drama with comedy," she says. "We go on a journey with the ladies. But it doesn't get too dark."

She adds, grinning; "After all, it's lunchtime theatre, and we don't want the audience going home feeling depressed."

n The Last Bloom, Oran Mor, until Saturday.