Actor Tandi Wright did not let an unexpected twist in the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream get in the way.
Despite badly spraining her ankle during Thursday night's 2 1/2-hour performance at the Sky City Theatre she carried on with the show.
Wright, who played lesbian nurse Caroline Buxtonon Shortland Street, kept the audience unaware of her injury while she played the part of Helena in the New Zealand Actors Company version of Shakespeare's comedy.
She hurt herself running downstairs: "I felt it but just kept on running."
Even her producer, Grant O'Neill, did not know she had injured herself.
"I didn't learn about it until afterwards when she went to A and E," he said.
Wright, sporting a plaster cast and crutches, and fellow company members were busy yesterday trying to work around the injury to do the final performances today.
The crutches have become a prop and the plaster cast will be decorated to fit in with Wright's costume.
"It's part of the deal with being an actor, the show must go on," she said.
O'Neill said A Midsummer Night's Dream was an extremely physical production but besides Wright's mishap the only other mildly serious injury involved actor Robin Malcolm, who pulled a ligament in her leg a week before the show opened.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is the company's first production, but certainly not its last.
O'Neill said about 25,000 people had seen the show during an eight-week North Island tour and the company had received invitations to travel to the South Island.