BEST known for playing straightlaced mothers in costume dramas alongside Maggie Smith and Richard E Grant, Gilian Cally has finally got the chance to make a break from the corsets and play a much-married, man-chasing bawd -- and she's loving it.

As one of eight cast members in the Dukes Theatre production of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, due to be performed in Lancaster this summer, South African-born Gilian will play one of literature's most formidable female characters -- The Wife Of Bath. The Wife recently burst on to our TV screens in an exuberant BBC modernising of the tales, with Julie Walters taking the part.

But, although Gilian admired the updating, the Dukes dramatisation will be very much a traditional affair, staged outdoors in the summery surroundings of Williamson Park.

"The music and the costumes are medieval," said Gilian. "But we don't talk in Middle English. It's a modern dramatisation."

"The Wife of Bath is larger than life," she said. "She's a little bawdy and deaf.

"She's already had five husbands, but she fancies another young man. For her, the pilgrimage to Canterbury is a bit of fun, rather than anything of religious significance."

Gilian admitted the role was a departure for her. Now in her early 50s, she's best known for playing more maternal types.

"I played a countess in the BBC's Scarlet Pimpernel with Richard E Grant," she said.

"I was the mother of the main love interest. Richard was smashing to work with -- a lovely man."

Another big-screen role was as Dickon's mother in the Warner Brothers adaptation of The Secret Garden with Maggie Smith.

"I was surrounded by six children," she said. "We were filming in Ilkley where it was pouring with rain.

"I was wearing this long dress with petticoats and I had to run down this hill with a baby in my arms. I got absolutely soaked!"

But there's no doubt she's enjoyed the excesses of the Wife Of Bath.

"I like doing all this bawdy stuff," she said. "It's really good fun -- a treat for me in my middle age!"

Catch The Canterbury Tales in Williamson Park, Lancaster, until August 7. For tickets, call (01524) 598500.