Audience ‘swore’ as Just Stop Oil stormed ‘Les Mis’ stage

Audience members at a West End production of Les Miserables brought to a halt by Just Stop Oil protesters started swearing, a court has heard.

The performance at the Sondheim Theatre on 5 October last year was stopped when activists stormed the stage and locked themselves to the set, the trial was told.

The “angry” audience of about 1,000 people was asked to leave the auditorium and the performance was cancelled around an hour later, the court heard – at a cost to the theatre of £60,000.

Hannah Taylor, 23, Lydia Gribbin, 28, Hanan Ameur, 22, Noah Crane, 18, and Poppy Bliss, 19, deny aggravated trespass. Ms Gribbin and Mr Crane also deny causing criminal damage to the theatre’s orchestra pit netting, which protects musicians from objects falling off the stage.

Asked how the audience reacted to the group disrupting the performance, the theatre manager, Daniel Lewis, told Westminster magistrates’ court: “I heard frustration. I heard anger. I heard swearing.”

He added: “The audience were singing to try and drown out the sound of the protest.”

Mobile phone footage played to the court showed theatre-goers reacting angrily to the news that the performance had been called off.

The protesters entered the stage during a performance of “Do You Hear the People Sing?”

PA Top (left to right): defendants Noah Crane, Poppy Bliss, Hanan Ameur, Hannah Taylor and Lydia Gribbin outside Westminster magistrates’ court; the performance of ‘Les Miserables’ (above) that was disrupted by protesters