Sir Ian McKellen taken to hospital after falling off stage

ODN

An eye-witness describes the moment Sir Ian McKellen fell of the stage during a performance of Player Kings at the Noel Coward Theatre on Monday evening.    Charlie Johnson, who was sitting in the front row, said it appeared the actor lost his footing before screaming in pain for help.     The theatre has since confirmed Sir Ian is in 'good spirits' and is expected to 'make a speedy and full recovery'.   Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00it got to about, almost about interval stage and I don't know how familiar you are with Henry IV,

00:07but it was just as the fight was happening between Hal and Hotspur and the lights all

00:14started going off. There was quite a lot of darkness and Ian McKellen sort of sprinted on stage

00:22and there was sort of a step just before the stage ends and the audience begins and he basically

00:32put one foot too far over that step from what it looked like from my angle, basically almost

00:38flipped over, went head first into the audience and immediately sort of blood-curdling screams,

00:48he was screaming help me. I didn't really know what was happening at first, I thought it could

00:54have been part of the play but within the first five seconds of him falling off stage the lights

00:59all came on in the auditorium and to their credit the ushers were really on it. They immediately

01:05went to his aid, they got the first two rows to evacuate pretty much immediately and then within

01:1130 seconds the rest of the auditorium was on their way out. Meanwhile all we could hear as

01:19we're exiting the building really is poor Ian's cries for help, it was really, really sad.

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