The show will go on for Welwyn Garden City’s pantomime after one of the actors broke his foot, forcing his character to be written out of the script.

On the opening night of Jack & the Beanstalk at Campus West, Jonas Cemm, who plays King Penniless as well as writing and directing the performance, suffered the injury that rule him out of any further shows.

It was left to it co-writer and Fleshcreep actor Joe Sargent, assistant director Fay Liberty and deputy stage manager Sophie Johnson to write Cemm out of the script and put on the show the very next day.

Producer Mark Woolman spoke to the Welwyn Hatfield Times about Cemm’s injury: “Poor old Jonas, I couldn’t quite believe it. It was the oddest thing.

“You know if you’re wearing a pair of shoes and sometimes your socks aren’t the best fitting? We he slipped within the shoe and broke his foot.

“On the first night as well. What luck is that?

“This is the first time anything like this has happened to us. We are such a small crew so we don’t have understudies.

“We did think we might lose someone to COVID, but not to a broken foot.”

Welwyn Hatfield Times: A shot from the opening night of Jack and the Beanstalk.A shot from the opening night of Jack and the Beanstalk. (Image: A2 Zoom Photography)

He explained how the script was rewritten: “It really is quite a challenge.

“Throughout the pantomime, there are references to this character and he’s on stage a lot as well as singing. It is incredibly difficult.

“You have to think of every consequence of taking that person out and how it might impact the scenes. Any play is about how things interweave, so having to redo all of that on a Saturday morning was a real challenge.

“I think they started about 11am and I spoke to Joe over the course of the day, and each time I spoke to him he got more and more exasperated as he was trying to rework everything.

“To get a show that people really enjoyed on the Saturday is a real testament to the amazing knowledge and skill of everyone involved.

“I know that Jonas is incredibly proud, but this is the first panto he’s written and he was also in it, so he was really invested. He is heartbroken.”