One theatre audience, already seated, is told that the play has been called off because of a technical hitch. Another full house is sent home after an aborted first act as an actor has become unwell. Elsewhere, ticket holders are informed at the interval that their show will not go on due to a flood.
Such 11th-hour delays, postponements and cancellations have all hit theatregoing audiences this summer. High-profile examples include Romeo & Juliet starring Tom Holland and People, Places and Things with Denise Gough, which both cancelled performances in the West End, while the Almeida’s Alma Mater was delayed after its lead actor, Lia Williams, bowed out.
Show times have even been moved to make way for the football by James Corden, who delayed his performance in Joe Penhall’s political drama The Constituent during the England v Switzerland penalty shootouts at the Euros. Comedian John Bishop brought his gig forward to the afternoon so it would not clash with England playing Spain in the final.
There have been several other unexpected hold-ups farther afield, in the world of spoken word (Miranda July, due to “unforeseen circumstances”) and music (Pearl Jam, due to “illness in the band”) in the past two months.
So is this turning out to be the unluckiest summer ever or has there been a cultural shift among casts and creative teams? Where in the past, producers might have pressed ahead with incorrigible showmanship, are they now buckling? Is the idea that “the show must go on” as outdated as the wartime motto “keep calm and carry on”?
Many theatres picking themselves back up after the Covid pandemic and its imposed interregnum would no doubt argue that lost revenue in delays and refunded tickets is the last thing they need. But the spectre of Covid might have left some more cautious about illness too. Niamh Dowling, the principal of Rada, says the concept that “the show must go on” embodies resilience, professionalism and adaptability. “But prioritising health and safety and recognising the importance of wellbeing is changing things for the better [in a post-Covid climate].”
With venues still struggling to recoup losses and some fighting to survive in the face of cuts to Arts Council England funding, this leaves a narrower margin when things go wrong, including technical faults and the cost of understudies. The Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre’s recent report on the state of theatre buildings surveyed 65 venues across the UK and found that one in five required at least £5m each over the next decade to continue functioning, and that without significant investment in the next five years 40% would become too unsafe to use.
Hampstead theatre, in north London, which lost its ACE funding in 2022, faced an emergency when the actor Thomas Levin left its main stage show, Visit from an Unknown Woman, on opening night earlier this month. A spokesperson said the venue did not employ understudies, and this was not only to do with cost but the nature of staging new writing: “Often a new play changes and develops in rehearsal and preview, and the main focus of the creative team has to be on that process. Understudies require a minimum two weeks to rehearse, so if we were to wait until the play were ‘fixed’ to start their contracts they would only be available for the final two weeks of a standard Hampstead run.”
Whatever the reason, delays are undoubtedly expensive. When a performance of Kiss Me, Kate, starring Adrian Dunbar, was cancelled by the Barbican in June because of a fault with the revolving stage, a welder was called to repair it, to no avail. So the show’s producer, Howard Panter, offered to buy everyone in the audience a drink at the bar.
It is not through a lack of effort that these shows have had to be temporarily shelved; some cancellations have been announced late in the day – up to an hour or so before curtain-up. This suggests creative teams really are trying to move heaven and earth to get their shows on.
When they haven’t been able to, many have surmounted their difficulties within a few days of their disaster scenarios. At Hampstead, James Corrigan took over from Levin, learned the script in two days and was off-book for his first performance. “We were fortunate to have a brilliant team in director Chelsea Walker and casting director Arthur Carrington, who pulled out all the stops to find a replacement actor so quickly, minimising any losses in revenue,” said the theatre’s spokesperson.
At the Almeida, too, Justine Mitchell won plaudits for her performance in Alma Mater after stepping in to fill Williams’ role the next day. The show was back up and running within a week. Mitchell was not the understudy and a spokesperson said that, as a subsidised theatre, they did not always have the resources for these: “We work on a case-by-case basis – varying our approach depending on the production and its demands. For example, for productions with larger casts (eg musicals), it can be feasible to cover certain roles within the existing cast.”
In some cases, the waiting and anticipating brings its own drama. As Dowling says, there is of course a thrill to a live show in which an actor steps in at the last minute or a show overcomes a technical malfunction while the audience holds its breath. But there is growing recognition in the industry about the importance of a more mindful approach too – “balancing resilience with the wellbeing of performers and audiences, so that courage and excitement doesn’t come at the expense of safety”.
