Just received this email


I'm gutted, got 2 nights in a hotel booked and need 48 hours to cancel. The email has only just arrived Looks like I've got a couple of days Christmas shopping in London....

The reason given for cancelling is

You need to contact the producers with a professionally written letter specifying which hotel you were staying at, quoting the term requiring 48 hours notice for cancellation and specifying precisely when you received the notification that the show was cancelled.

Irrespective of your refund or rescheduling for another performance, you should request that they reimburse the foreseeable consequential loss of the cost of your hotel room. You don't need to tell them that you are nevertheless going to use the room. However, they will only be willing to reimburse you to the extent that you have mitigated your loss, ie the fee for cancelling the room rather than the full cost, in the event that such fee is lower than the full cost.

If they just ignore you or tell you to bog off, write back and say you will be drafting a small claims form and notifying the Sun. That might prompt them to respect your legal rights.

http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/i...aims/index.htm

That sounds like a poor excuse for cancellation to me.

Surely common sense should have told them how much rehearsal time they would need with so many child actors involved in the show!

Thanks for the advice Onwards&Upwards, I've managed to book a different show (Wicked) so the weekend won't be a total waste.

As soon as I get back I'll pop a letter in the post. To be honest, when the tickets were booked we didn't realise they were for a preview performance. I'll not make that mistake again thats for sure. I'll probably not go to see Oliver now. It's a huge chore getting to London for one evenings entertainment. I was looking forward to seeing Rowan Atkinson playing Fagin but hey ho, I'm already over it


I've heard on the grapevine they cancelled the performances because the set isn't ready not because they need more time to rehearse but I'm not sure how true that is.

Funny how the show Jessie is in still managed to open despite the first preview show being the very first full dress rehearsal!

I'd be really gutted if that happened to me, hope you people can sort it out :-/

It does seem bizarre, especially as the previews are there to give the performers time to get into the swing of things before official opening night.

Quite why they need so many kids, God knows! I know they have three sets of kids, but each set is 50 - that's a lot of kids! Sounds like they're trying to turn this show into somw kind of epic, which is ridiculous. No-one goes to see a show because it's huge (in terms of the number of cast members, sets etc). There's a saying that Cameron Mackintosh would do well to heed - 'Less is more'!

To be fair, that's a very small production with a handful of extremely experienced adult actors. 150 kids is another story altogether. That said, I agree that this is something they should have forseen and planned for a bit better.

Obviously professional theatre (particularly professional theatre on a Cam Mac scale) is a bit different, but in amateur productions there is often a tendancy to use as many children as you can fit on a stage because its a good way of ensuring strong ticket sales. How many grannies, aunties, cousins, friends and siblings does each child have that can be relied upon for support?

Cam knows that each child equals at least ten ticket sales. Obviously, this is a huge production and will be banking on a lot more than that, but there's 1,500 tickets that other shows don't have in the bag.

To be honest, though, I still think it's a daft thing to do. It's better to have a more streamlined cast who know what they're doing, rather than stuffing as many kids as is physically possible onto the stage in order to get ticket sales. It just gets messy and confusing when there are too many people on-stage.

From the website:

Cameron Mackintosh said today: "Due to the complexity of the production and the need to safely rehearse 150 children with the adult company of 35 actors on a moving set, we have decided that we need extra rehearsal time and therefore, with great regret, I have decided to cancel the first two previews.

"Licensing regulations require us to have three teams of 50 children, many of whom are on stage for most of the show. Each scene has to be rehearsed three times and, as the set is very large and complicated, it is imperative that they are rehearsed in complete safety."

Sounds like it's more to do with the set than the children being ready. Maybe it just wasn't assembled in time to let all three groups rehearse with it. Obviously they should have forseen this but it's not possible to plan for everything. The three groups would have to rehearse separately whether there was 50 or 15 in them so while the vast numbers may complicate matters I doubt it has caused the delay. The very nature of previews is to allow the cast time to settle in and come together so if the boys weren't quite ready that wouldn't matter, if the stage isn't ready it matters a lot. Joseph had several problems with the set during previews, so did Lord of the Rings, and adding lots of kids to the equation would make for a big risk if it wasn't ready.

And having 50 boys probably is necessary as the workhouse can't be too sparsely populated and the 2 songs performed at the beginning need to be rousing. I think only about 10 boys are actually in the gang so don't think that's overkill. Don't think they're having much problem selling tickets and 1500 or so parents/relatives isn't that much in the greater scheme of things - it wouldn't even fill Drury Lane for one show, and certainly wouldn't have much effect on a 6 month run. It's really unfortunate and my heart goes out to those who've missed out but sure it was necessary and good luck to them all for tomorrow. Hope it's a great success.

PS. Chuffed for Jessie, probably more fitting part and production for her professional debut. I have no doubt hers will be a long and successful career.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...ehearsals.html

Seems it is all the kids.........

Cameron Macintosh is 62? Holy crap! He looks good for his age!