Cameron Mackintosh has today announced that previews for the London production of Hamilton will now begin on 6 December rather than the originally announced 21 November 2017. The ofiicial opening night will now take place on 21 December 2017.
The delay has been caused by delays to the multi-million pound refurbishment of the Victoria Palace Theatre.
Cameron Mackintosh said: “The massive redevelopment in Victoria by Land Securities and Transport For London gave me a once in a hundred years opportunity to expand and restore the Victoria Palace Theatre. It has been an extraordinary undertaking, both thrilling and fraught, not only because of the complexity of putting what is practically a brand new building into the shell of a much loved historical masterpiece, but because it was also the ideal theatre for the most eagerly awaited American musical in decades ‘Hamilton’.
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.
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. We have therefore needed to take a pragmatic decision to reschedule the previews of ‘Hamilton’ to commence on December 6th, two weeks later than originally planned.
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.
Thanks to the phenomenal efforts of the amazing team (of hundreds!) working often around the clock to get the theatre ready, I look forward to welcoming our patrons to the newly constructed theatre where Frank Matcham’s masterpiece will be revealed in even greater splendour as a spectacular home for this landmark musical.”
Customers who have purchased tickets via official Hamilton channels for the performances affected by the rescheduled previews will be contacted directly by Ticketmaster in order to be re-seated. All seats that were put on sale for the first booking period to June 2018 have now sold out, however, a large numbers of seats were held in reserve to be released at the time the building was nearing completion which will allow affected patrons to be re-seated early in the run with a minimum of inconvenience. Once the reseating has been completed, the remaining tickets for this first booking period will be put on sale in October.
Editor’s note: Cameron Mackintosh has done a superb job in restoring many of London’s great theatres and we look forward to the unveiling of the new Victoria Palace Theatre. We know that it will be worth the wait.
