Have fun being a corpse

Since writing last week’s column, I have been through what you could call a near-death experience.

You should try it. It was a lot of fun. Let me explain.

My wife and I are regular visitors to the Watermill at Newbury, which is arguably the most gorgeous theatre in the world, and that is a good enough reason to visit the place at least once.

But we keep going back because productions are often of stupendous quality, performed by immensely skilled actors.

The latest show, called Burke and Hare, is no exception.

It tells the true story of two men in 19th century Edinburgh who briefly made a lucrative income from selling cadavers to a doctor for the purposes of dissection, at a time when grave robbing was rife.

But while others at least had the decency to wait until the body was dead, Burke and Hare supplied the demand by bumping off their victims in the lodging house where they lived.

All this sounds like the plot of a gruesome horror, but it is actually a comedy, made funnier by the complications of just three actors sharing the parts of accomplices and victims, as well as murderers.

When we arrived for last Monday’s performance I was delighted to find that the tickets a friend had organised for us were for the front row, which is always an extra treat, and not one I get to experience very often, because my wife has a morbid fear of audience participation. But when I joked that we were so close to the action that it was almost like we were in the play, I didn’t realise how true that would turn out to be.

There comes a point in the play when the cast need a fourth person to play a key part, so one of the actors stepped off the stage and approached a lady in the audience. She had already made up her mind that nothing would get her out of her seat, but I must have looked like more of a mug, and before I knew it I was being led on to the stage.

I don’t want to be any more of a spoiler, but I will say that if you are the one who is plucked from the audience, you get to play the part of one of the victims on the dissecting table.

As you can imagine, this role requires very little training and even less acting ability, and although you have your eyes closed during your five minutes in the spotlight, you are sure to have even more fun than the rest of the audience.

And your fame doesn’t end when you leave the stage.

As we headed for the car park afterwards, I heard somebody refer to me as “one of the stars of the show,” having been recognised as “that chap who was on the table.”

It was not the first time I have successfully made the transition from audience to player.

Many years ago, thanks to working on this paper, I got to be an extra in a courtroom drama at the Wyvern Theatre, and I was also fortunate to see two Shakespeare plays that were called ‘promenade performances’ because the audience sometimes got caught up in crowd scenes.

Burke and Hare runs until May 26, but no longer at the Watermill, because it begins touring village halls in the area, including at Shrivenham Memorial Hall, this Wednesday. If you can get tickets, do, and if you can get one in the front row: even better. After all, it is the second best chance you are ever going to get to be a corpse.