Confessions of a Box Office Manager: was Adele a West End hero?

I think the Society Of London Theatre needs to have a whip-round and buy Adele a big thank you present. While it's hugely disappointing both for her and her legions of fans that she was forced to cancel her final Wembley concerts at the beginning of the month, the unexpected side effect was that the majority of West End shows saw a huge upswing in attendance on the Saturday night as thousands of visitors to the capital suddenly found themselves at a loose end.

Ours was no exception. I must be honest though, initially I was somewhat confused: I wandered into work at lunchtime for my late shift without having looked at the TV, radio or any kind of social media, so when my Deputy breathlessly greeted me at the door with "Adele's cancelled" I thought one of the new temps we'd just taken on had called in sick. (None of them are actually called Adele, admittedly, but I am terrible with names.) I knew something was afoot when I looked at the plan and saw that all we had left was a handful of single seats. That's weird, I thought, I was only looking at this performance last night and thinking we may need to send some seats to the TKTS booth at a discount.

"Good grief. Have you seen this plan?!" I exclaimed to my hovering Dep. "What on earth has happened?"

"Well this is it," he replied, "it's all the Adele people…as fast as I'm opening up the house seats, they're being snapped up. Premiums too."

"The Adele people? Who are these 'Adele people'? And don't roll your eyes at me."

"ADELE! Adele! You know…." and he launched into a catastrophic rendition of 'Hello From The Other Side', the veins in his neck bulging alarmingly. He's always fancied himself as a bit of a singer, and loves any opportunity to show off. He was on a TV Talent show once. It did not go well, but that's a story for another time.

"Yes yes yes," I responded testily, cutting him off in his vocal prime (no need to thank me), "I know who bloody Adele is, thank you. But what's she got to do with this?"

"Her concert at Wembley, she's had to cancel!"

"Oh blimey, right, gotcha. That's pretty immense isn't it?"

"Yes it is, I had tickets for tomorrow." (Ouch)

I was about to commiserate when the door from the street swung open and a woman in an Adele T-shirt literally charges across the foyer at us as though she was being chased.

"You have GOT to help me" she bellows, her smudged mascara suggesting that she may recently have been crying.

"Certainly…how?"

"Well, I was supposed to be seeing HER" she breathes (heavily) while pointing repeatedly at the photo on her chest, presumably in case we didn't know who or what 'her' was, "but now I'm not. So I NEED tickets for this. Please help me, PLEASE!"

I check the plan and mentally debate whether we can let any more of the house seats go this early in the day. I decide that we can, and the customer looks as though she might cry again.

Variations on this occurred throughout the afternoon until we had sold literally every last box office and cast hold, house seat and standing place. I made one of the clerks take a photo of me standing behind the House Full sign (which hasn't been required in many a month) with an expression of sheer amazement on my face.

I was going to put it on Instagram until she pointed out that several people from the production office follow me on there, and might misinterpret my bewildered look as a comment on the levels of business I would normally expect this show to be doing on a balmy summer Saturday. I made a mental note to buy her a large G&T once the show had gone up. So we did another one with me beaming with pride next to the sign, Instagrammed that, and it was immediately 'liked' by the guys from the production office, and shared on the show's Twitter account (although I felt the caption "Thanks Adele!!!" may have been a trifle insensitive given some of the sob stories we'd been hearing throughout the afternoon with regard to wasted plane and train fares, and expensive hotel stays.)

The following weekend it was back to normal: healthy Saturday houses but at considerable discounts. I tried -without success- to keep the incredulity out of my voice when responding to one of the dimmer elements of the production office ringing in something of a panic on the post-Adele Saturday with the question "why do you think it isn't as busy as it was last week?" You do wonder how these people get into this line of work sometimes, you really do.

While it is great to get a genuine full house and for the show to have made a huge amount of money, there is also something bittersweet about it when you consider that it is on the back of so many people being incredibly disappointed. Still our producers were happy, I got some new Instagram followers (I've taken the photo down now though, I looked a bit fat and smug) and, hey, nobody died.