Review: BURKE AND HARE, Jermyn Street Theatre

It's 1828 in Edinburgh and medical advances are running as fast as the number of cadavers are low. Spurred by their stack of debts and with a penchant for enterprise, William Burke (Hayden Wood) and William Hare (Alex Parry) decide to take advantage of the influenza outbreak to supply surgeons with (mostly) fresh bodies with the help of Mrs Hare (Katy Daghorn) and other incidental unfortunates.

Jermyn Street Theatre closes the year with Burke and Hare, a gleefully macabre and morbid black comedy written by Tom Wentworth and directed by Abigail Pickard Price. First presented at The Watermill Theatre and introduced here as a co-production with Jermyn Street themselves, the play is a proper laugh from the moment Wood steps on stage.

The effervescent cast of three juggle a multitude of characters - even sharing the same one in the same scene as it happens with poor Fergus - flexing their acting muscles with accents, postures, and displaying an impressive collection of hats. They certainly are a well-oiled machine, unafraid to nudge the audience and improvise within the show.

Pickard Price directs a piece of purified comedy that engages the crowd with uproarious gags and boisterous asides, offering a chunk of gruesome history. The soundscape is craftily used as another mean to exact laughter from the public and music played by the actors themselves acts as interlude between the scenes.

The set is joyfully eerie too: Toots Butcher decorates the stage with smoky grey walls and a range of vintage medical illustrations paired with subtly bloodied curtains and clever lighting (very atmospherically curated by Harry Armytage).

The raucous script and the company's comedic chemistry are tied together in the success of Burke and Hare. They own the tongue-in-cheek jet-black humour and deploy weapons of mass-hilarity to deliver Jermyn Street Theatre's Christmas present to their patrons.

Burke and Hare runs are Jermyn Street Theatre until 21 December.

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