Empire curtain staying down until August
Sunderland Empire has extended its closure, in line with restrictions in place to limit the spread of COVID-19.
The theatre in High Street West released a statement to announce that, as with all venues in the Ambassador Theatre Group, all performances have now been suspended until Sunday, August 2.
Affected customers are being contacted by email with an offer to exchange tickets to a future performance or a full credit voucher. Vouchers cover the full amount of the original booking, including any fees, and are valid for at least 12 months.
Empire shows cancelled or postponed so far due to the pandemic include Beautiful: the Carole King musical, Footloose, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, Jimmy Carr and Heathers the musical.
The latest statement reads: “We greatly apologise for the inconvenience this will cause, but hope that you understand that this is the correct course of action given the exceptional circumstances we are all experiencing.
“Over the last few months, our teams up and down the country have successfully rescheduled over 15,000 separate performances of great quality plays, musicals, comedy and live music. For further details please go to https://www.atgtickets.com/rescheduled-and-postponed-shows/.
“From November 2020 and throughout 2021, we have a wonderful array of productions on-sale, everything from Pantomime to The Book of Mormon, Disney’s The Lion King to Jimmy Carr, and Derren Brown to Sunny Afternoon. Please book with confidence knowing that if there are any further suspensions, your new tickets will remain fully valid for further exchanges or refunds.
“If you have made a booking that is affected by this suspension, you do not need to do anything. We are currently contacting customers whose original tickets were for performances up to 28 June . Customers booked for performances between 29 June -12 July will be contacted in the week commencing 8 June. Customers booked for performances between 13 July – 2 August will be contacted in the week commencing 22 June.
“On behalf of all our staff, backstage crews, front of house teams, actors, dancers, musicians, and the entire British theatre industry we want to thank you for your support and understanding as we work together to ensure the future success of our industry. All of us at ATG are enormously proud to be a small part of British theatre, renowned as the greatest in the world.
“The arts has inspired, educated, entertained and enriched the lives of audiences for hundreds of years but has never been challenged like this. With your ongoing commitment we believe we can come back faster and stronger than ever before.
“As you can imagine, we have a large number of customers that we are assisting, so we ask that you please bear with us. Your patience is greatly appreciated at this time.”
The theatre group is currently working to reschedule as many shows as possible for performances from June 29 to August 2.
For queries, email help@ atgtickets.com or call 0333 009 6690. Lines are open every day from 9am to 8pm.