Horror Show: Boys Receive Cuts to the Neck After School Play Goes Wrong

Two teenage boys have been injured, one seriously, during a school performance of Sweeney Todd at an exclusive East Auckland school.

St John confirmed they were called to St Kentigern College in Pakuranga just after 9pm. Two 16-year-olds had received "cuts to the neck".

One was seriously injured, the other moderately, and both were taken to Auckland City Hospital. Both are in a stable condition.

"We believe it was a performance of some description that went wrong," a spokeswoman for St John said.

Speculation is mounting how two teenagers came to suffer wounds during the opening night of the Sweeney Todd school production at the college's Elliot Hall.

Some people connected to the college are saying the teenage boys were injured on stage by the sharp blade of a cut-throat razor prop, while others speculate they may have been injured leaving the stage through a trap door chute.

During the show, Sweeney Todd's victims are cleanly dispatched from the barber chair.

The school website says the set design was in keeping with the Broadway version which included a revolving stage.

It also faced the challenge of creating a mechanical chair to dispose of Todd's victims directly down a chute into the bakehouse.

The musical, by Stephen Sondheim, features cut-throat razors and in pictures of the production the members of the show's cast can be seen using them.

The show re-tells the Victorian melodrama of Sweeney Todd, an English barber and serial killer who kills his customers with a razor and, with the help of Mrs Lovett, a struggling pie shop owner, turns their corpses into meat pies. The musical was made into a hit film starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Read more at NZHerald.co.nz