The London opening of smash US stage musical Hamilton has been delayed by a fortnight, leaving thousands of ticket holders unsure when they will see the record-breaking show.
Impresario Cameron Mackintosh blamed the delay on problems with building works at the Victoria Palace theatre as he announced that previews will begin on 6 December rather than 21 November.
Some 16,000 ticket holders who had bought seats for the first two weeks of previews face a wait to discover when their tickets will be rescheduled. The show is in such demand that some tickets for the cancelled nights were on sale on the secondary market for more than £2,800 each before the announcement on Friday.
The show was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and uses hip-hop to tackle the unlikely subject of the life and times of the United States’ first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton. It won 11 Tony awards, including for best musical, the 2016 Pulitzer prize for drama and the 2016 Grammy award for best musical theatre album. Michelle Obama proclaimed it “the best art I have ever seen in my life”.
Fans took to social media to voice frustration at the delay. Michelle, from Germany, said on Twitter: “It’s not like people booked flights and hotels.” Rachael said: “Not cool that my Hamilton tickets have been postponed until further notice cause the theatre isn’t ready.”
The producers said: “A large number of seats were held in reserve to be released at the time the building was nearing completion which will allow affected patrons to be reseated early in the run with a minimum of inconvenience.”
Asked if compensation would be paid for travel and hotel costs, a spokeswoman for Mackintosh told the Guardian: “Patrons will be contacted direct by Ticketmaster to discuss their own specific circumstances.”
“We are extremely sorry to disappoint patrons who we know expended time, effort and valuable resources to purchase tickets for our first performances,” said producer Jeffrey Seller. “But they will be given immediate priority so that they can be reseated as early as possible.”
Mackintosh described the refurbishment of the theatre as “thrilling and fraught”.
“The time constraints to access the land around the theatre to enable the rebuild and getting the show open to the public by the end of this year have been equally tight, not helped by the theatre being built over the huge King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer, an active 200-year-old brick tunnel,” he said.
“Added to the usual unhelpful problems that always happen when doing up old buildings, this has put pressure on the time needed to commission the entirely new services that have been installed at the theatre and obtain the necessary licences to reopen to the public. I am, of course, sorry to amend the performance schedule but undertaking a private rebuilding project on this scale in central London has no precedent.”
