Ethan Hawke feared his new nine-hour theatre marathon "The Coast Of Utopia" was doomed when co-star Richard Easton suffered a heart attack onstage during a preview.

The actor was in the middle of a scene with Easton, who plays Hawke's father in the play, when the theatre veteran fell to the floor during only the second preview performance.

Hawke recalls, "I'm looking at him... and I can see that something's wrong. Then he proceeds to have a heart attack but I'm the only one that knows he's had a heart attack because everybody else thinks that that's the play - he's yelling at his son and then he has a heart attack.

"(Actress) Martha Plimpton is on stage with me and we both look at each other and I look at him and, you know, you can tell by the way somebody falls that it wasn't on purpose. Martha went out and said, 'Is there a doctor in the house?' and I made eye contact with the whole audience and you could tell that everyone just thought we were acting.

"They just couldn't get a handle on it until the prop master... came out and did CPR (emergency medical procedure Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and kept him alive. Richard recovered but for a few minutes he was dead there onstage, our second night."

Easton returned to the show two weeks after his onstage heart attack.

(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)