Worksafe to look at grisly play accident

The St Kentigern College’s school play where two students were injured will be investigated by Worksafe New Zealand.

The two students hurt in a throat-slitting scene during a performance of the musical Sweeney Todd at the Auckland college on Wednesday night were in a stable condition and were likely to be discharged from hospital, principal Steve Cole said. The school has cancelled its next performance of the show.

Police visited the school yesterday and made ‘‘initial inquiries’’ about the incident, a police spokeswoman said.

The exclusive east Auckland school has also launched its own investigation into how the students suffered injuries to their necks during Wednesday’s opening night performance.

Cole said he was ‘‘very concerned’’ about the accident. One 16-year-old student suffered serious injuries, and another had moderate injuries.

Cole said an investigation was under way to determine exactly what happened and to ensure it did not recur.

‘‘Our priority is to continue to support the boys and their families. We are also very focused on helping other cast and crew members, along with the wider school community, and have offered all students counselling.’’

A witness said the audience on Wednesday night had no idea an accident had happened, and that the blood spilled was real.

‘‘No announcements were made to the audience that the throat slitting was not all just fake blood. The show went on – we never knew anything about the real blood being spilt until later,’’ the audience member said.

The woman, who did not want her name used, said it was a terrible accident. ‘‘It is terribly sad what has happened.’’

She said she hoped the boys would recover quickly and the show would go on.

Penny Fitt, associate director at Wellington acting school Toi Whakaari, said it was not normal practice in stage productions to use real knives. If so, they were usually made to be very blunt.

In some versions of the musical, adapted from a Victorian penny dreadful, the barber turned serial killer Sweeney Todd sets up a barber’s shop above a struggling pie shop and kills his victims using a straight razor, before disposing of them through a trapdoor. He and the pie shop owner then turn the victims’ corpses into meat pies.

The show was scheduled to run until tomorrow at the school.