Two boys suffer neck injuries in Sweeney Todd school play

Two teenage boys were hospitalised in New Zealand after their necks were cut with a prop razor during a school production of Sweeney Todd.

The Stephen Sondheim musical is based on the legend about a barber who murders his customers by slitting their throats.

Ambulances were called to Saint Kentigern school, in east Auckland, when the throat-cutting scene in the production's second act went wrong.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In a radio interview, the school's head teacher, Steve Cole, said the prop razor had been blunted with a number of materials and the injuries were the result of a "very unfortunate mistake".

"It's normal for Sweeney Todd to have such an instrument [and it] clearly had been checked many, many times," he said.

Cole said he had "no idea" how the boys had ended up being injured by the blunt instrument and said the drama teachers involved were "very competent and have run numerous shows at the college".

The audience knew nothing about the incident until after the show, said AucklandNow.

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

Penny Fitt, an associate director at Toi Whakaari, a drama school in Wellington, said it was not normal practice in productions to use real knives and if so, they were usually made to be very blunt.

Police say they are treating the incident as an accident.

"It's not a criminal inquiry. In this instance the play is not the reality," said a spokesman.

Both cast members have been released from hospital and the school hopes to go ahead with the rest of the run at a later date.