Theatre This article is more than 15 years old

Actor cutting neck was stage accident, Hamburg theatre says

This article is more than 15 years oldThalia theatre denies Daniel Hoevels, who needed two stitches in neck after death scene, was given real blade on purpose

A Hamburg theatre has denied reports that an actor suffered a life-threatening cut to his throat after a prop knife was reportedly replaced by one with a real blade.

Daniel Hoevels, 30, was said to have had blood "pouring from his neck" after he stabbed himself with the knife in a suicide scene.

The Thalia theatre company issued a strong denial in response to reports by the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Guardian and Sky TV that police were investigating a possible murder plot against the actor, who was playing the role of Mortimer in Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart at Vienna's Burgtheater.

The company admitted that a female prop manager had bought a knife for use on stage and forgotten to blunt it. The case was reported to police as a matter of course. Hoevels said he would not press charges.

"During a guest performance of Maria Stuart there was an accident," the Thalia theatre said in a statement referring to the incident on 6 December.

"Daniel Hoevels suffered a cut to his neck, but there was no serious injury."

On the advice of a doctor Hoevels went to hospital, received two stitches and was released immediately, then went to a party, the statement said.

According to the theatre's managing director, who was present at the time, Hoevels completed the scene as he always had done using fake blood. He reappeared on stage the following night wearing a plaster, and not, as reported, a bandage around his neck.

A spokeswoman for the Burgtheater in Vienna said the reports had been exaggerated, including untrue accounts that the audience applauded when Hoevels accidentally cut his neck.

The police denied reports that an investigation had been launched or that DNA tests of backstage crew and cast members had been carried out.

A picture used to apparently illustrate the incident, of Hoevels clutching his bloodied neck, was said by the theatre to be two years old and not of the apparent accident with the knife.

Hoevels is now playing in Ulrich Plenzdorf's The New Sorrows of Young Werther.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaK%2Bfp7mle5FpZ3FnlJqwcH2UaJiuq6SntqJ506Gcmqyimg%3D%3D