It's a nightmare that lurks in the back of the mind of anyone who appears in a production of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
A mishap with a real razor used in a New Zealand school production of the 1979 Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical wound up sending two 16-year-olds to the hospital with slash wounds to the neck, according to the Associated Press.
It happened on the April 6 opening night of the production at Saint Kentigern College in Auckland. The razor was used in the scene where the homicidal barber main character slits the throats of his victims while shaving them.
Schoolmaster Steve Cole told a local radio station, “It had been bound in cellophane, bound in all sorts of things. It was very non-sharp, blunted, and had been through all sorts of health and safety checks. It was a very unfortunate mishap.”
Nevertheless, real blood was shed from two of Sweeney's ”victims.” Both young men were treated overnight at a local hospital and released the morning of April 7.
