A week after Cynthia Erivo halted a performance of Dracula to call out a disruptive audience member, a matinee show of the production has been cancelled.
The award-winning actress, who already has a Tony, Emmy and Grammy under her belt, is currently playing 23 roles in the one-woman show on London’s West End.
The show kicked off at the Noel Coward Theatre in February, with Cynthia set to perform another 27 times before it wraps up on May 30.
However, a performance that was set to take place tomorrow afternoon has been quietly axed – with no explanation as to why.
An insider confirmed today that the matinee had been canned, with all of the remaining tickets taken off sale.
‘The whole thing has become an absolute farce,’ one theatre source told The Sun.
‘Last week there were concerns about this show going ahead and now it has been axed.
‘It’s disgusting because people have spent money on tickets, not counting travel and probably hotels and now it’s been scrapped.’
They added: ‘Ticket holders have been told they can exchange their ticket for another day but that doesn’t feel like it’s good enough. People could still lose money.’
The publication has reported that one theatregoer complained about this being the second time a performance of Dracula they had tickets to had been cancelled, calling it ‘unacceptable’.
‘At this point, I’m not even going to try and rebook. I’m pretty disgusted with how this has been handled, and I don’t want to keep paying for a production that clearly isn’t reliable,’ they said.
Meanwhile another declared: ‘Shocking. What a mess this production has been. Contempt for audiences.’
Despite the cancellation, it appears tomorrow evening’s show is still going ahead – with the majority of the theatre sold out, but 52 seats still being available.
Just last night Cynthia also re-shared two posts from the show’s official page promoting tickets for the final few weeks.
The Sun claimed last week there was issues behind the scenes of the critically acclaimed show, with one person describing the production as an ‘endless headache’.
‘Cynthia is a big Hollywood star, so you could forgive her for having some diva moments. But there has been so much chaos behind the scenes.
‘Cancellations at the last moment put so much stress on the people working to put the show on that it’s causing migraines.
‘No one knows from one day to the next whether a performance may or may not go ahead. To work with that level of uncertainty is difficult.’
The cancellation comes after two Saturday performances of Dracula were axed earlier this month one day before Cynthia ran the London Marathon – with ticket holders reportedly only told three hours before the matinee performance had been due to begin.
Then the day after she completed the marathon in an impressive 3:21:40, she returned to the stage.
However, about an hour into the show, she stopped it to reprimand an audience member who had broken the rules and taken their phone out to film her on stage.
‘She straight up called the guy out! Put her hand up and said, “excuse me, are you filming right now?”, And the person said “sorry” and she said, “did you just say sorry?”. And was immediately surrounded by crew and walked off,’ one person who had been in the theatre explained.
The attendee was then ‘kicked out’ by security, with the show stopped for about 10 minutes after Cynthia temporarily left the stage.
Her actions were praised by many, with many declaring she was helping to ‘bring back theatre etiquette’.
Metro has contacted the production company for Dracula, the Noel Coward Theatre and representatives for Cynthia Erivo for comment.
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