WHEN a writer describes his new play as “an existentialist musical” there’s a real chance no one will actually knows what that means – but it certainly intrigues.

Ashley Smith, who can be seen in BBC Scotland’s Scot Squad as the young PC who runs across lots of fields chasing nonsense, is one of the performers in Oran Mor’s Tap Dancing With Jean-Paul Sartre.

James Runcie’s “play” is set Paris, spring 1956 where Fred Astaire (Darren Brownlie) the world’s greatest dancer, Jean-Paul Sartre (Kevin Lennon) the world’s most influential philosopher and Audrey Hepburn, (Smith) the world’s most beautiful woman, meet up.

And so they discuss all sorts of things; why are we here? Who are we? And what will we do if we can’t dance?

“Fred and Audrey actually met, at the time of filming Funny Face, but not with Sartre,” says Smith.

“The play talks about the platonic relationship between Fred and Audrey. And Sartre touches on their relationship, and asks a series of interesting questions, wondering if an actor is never not acting, and what is their reality?”

The Fyfe-born actress who first trod the boards with Lochgelly Children’s Musical Theatre adds: “Sartre wants to know can things be real once they are captured and edited. There are lots of themes posed.

“And there are a few tunes repeated throughout.”

Smith loves the very idea of playing Audrey Hepburn. “I’ve grown up watching her films, and I’ve been re-watching some recently.

“I don’t know anyone who isn’t a fan. She has an amazing energy on screen, but then on reading up on her I’ve come to realise that for most of her young life she was a really sad person.”

Smith explains that Hepburn grew up the child of aristocratic parents. “She was born in the Netherlands and trained as a ballet dancer. Along the way she had two husbands, and two sons.”

Hepburn also coped with Nazi occupation and suffered survivor’s guilt. She had a troubled personal life, at one point dumping lover William Holden because she found out he couldn’t have children.

Perhaps that inner sadness helped her to play very real characters? “Yes, I think there is something in that. Sadness, like other extreme experiences can help.

“She certainly is a multi-layered woman and with a great deal of life experience.”

If the best actors are those who can recall sadness to fuel a performance, you suggest Smith’s life must have featured a great deal of misery, given she walked out of Glasgow’s RSAMD with the Gold Medal?

“I think your theory is wrong, mostly,” she says, grinning. “I’ve been happy growing up and I’ve been sad. But a performance emerges from all experiences.”

There is also dancing in the play. Did Lochgelly teach her to dance? “Yes, and I can dance a little. But Audrey wasn’t a great dancer, and we have Darren Brownlie, a brilliant dancer choreographing so I’m in great hands.”

Smith, who has worked with a range of theatre companies in Scotland including NTS, the Traverse and Catherine Wheel, also sings. “Yet, back in Lochgelly, I was never allowed to audition for any of the musical singing parts,” she says, laughing. “But I’m over that now. And I did have a lot of fun with other parts.”

The then teenager reveals she was so committed to the dream of acting she moved schools at the end of Fourth Year in order to study drama.

But was she so committed to this play that she study Sartre in order to absorb the essence of existentialism? “I haven’t gone that far into it,” she smiles. “And I would say this is a piece of entertainment. It doesn’t have you work too hard.”

Smith, who has wanted to act from a very early age, (“I once thought of being a policewoman, but was too short”) isn’t unlike Hepburn, who died in 1993. And I’m going to get false eyelashes fitted and an Audrey haircut, which will give me a fringe.” She laughs: “I haven’t had a fringe since I was 12 years-old.”

l Tap Dancing With Jean-Paul Sartre, Oran Mor Glasgow, until Saturday.