It's the moment every understudy dreams will happen - the phonecall to say the lead actor is ill and you'll be playing the role instead. It happened in Milton Keynes on Tuesday for 24-year-old actor Cameron Slater, from nearby Towcester, Northants.  I felt my stomach do a leap and thought 'here we go'. | | Cameron Slater |
He was all set to play two minor roles in Tom's Midnight Garden at the theatre, but as the male understudy he was first in the pecking order if anyone went ill. "The company manager telephoned and said Stefan (Butler, who usually plays Tom), was unable to do the two performances. "I felt my stomach do a leap and thought 'here we go'," he told BBC Beds, Herts and Bucks. "As an understudy, it's the kind of telephone call you are always wondering if and when it will happen, so to have it happen here in Milton Keynes was amazing." Exhilarating A few frantic rereads of the scripts, some hasty rehearsals and talk-throughs and Cameron was ready. "I know all the parts, but hearing them is very different to playing it on stage. "I'd been cramming like mad just before and then just as I was about to go on stage my mind went blank," he said.  | | Cameron Slater |
Luckily his memory did not desert him and Cameron managed an astonishing "clean shave", with only a couple of words in the wrong order. "It was amazing, so exhilarating and because the rest of the cast were so supportive, especially Claire who plays Hatty, I felt very safe on stage." Cameron breathed vitality and fun into the part of the young Tom, successfully portraying his eagerness in finding the midnight garden, his sensitivity towards playmate Hatty and giving a moving performance and memorable in the last crucial scene. For those of us in the audience, there was no feeling of being left shortchanged - apart from in the pyjama department. "Stefan is shorter than I am, so the pjyamas I wear throughout the play came up a bit short!" laughed Cameron. His parents Nigel and Hester, were able to get along to the performance at short notice and joined their son backstage to meet him and the cast. | As a child I used to play doctors and nurses, but make sure there was an audience there to watch. | | Cameron Slater |
Acting has been a lifelong passion for Cameron, whose first role came as the boy in The Snowman at St Lawrence Junior School, Towcester. After moving on to Sponne School, in the town, he continued his studies at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth before his postgraduate training at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. "As a child I was always keen on acting, like other children I'd play doctors and nurses, but I'd make sure there was an audience there to watch it." Cameron said he is keen to try his hand at acting of all kinds and, in what is surely a perilous profession, would simply like to made a good living. "As they say, you're only as good as your next part," he joked. | 
