Actor swaps stage for operating theatre

“Break a leg”, is the good luck message given to actors before they take the stage.

However, actor and writer of East Kilbride Arts Centre’s latest production Liam Lambie took it a bit too literally at the weekend when an onstage fall resulted in him sustaining a broken wrist.

In a twist that even the talented playwright would struggle to script, Liam went straight from the stage of a theatre to an operating theatre – but not before going through a performance in excruciating pain.

The 31-year-old, from Airdrie, was starring on the second night of his WWI show, O’er The Top, last Friday, when he jumped on stage and landed awkwardly, breaking his wrist in two places which a doctor later described as “one of the worst” he’d ever seen.

“You couldn’t have scripted it, since we are also called Geez A Break productions,” Liam said.

“I told the cast I’d broken my wrist, but they didn’t believe me. I rolled up my wrist and it was in a figure of eight.

“But the show had to go on and I had it put in a sling and the audience just thought it was part of the act.”

After the show Liam’s co-producer and fellow actor Ross McAree drove him to University Hospital Hairmyres, where he was kept in and underwent an emergency operation on Saturday.

Liam said: “I actually said to the doctor I need to be out, I’ve got a theatre show on Saturday night, and he told me the only theatre you are going to be in is an operating theatre.”