Sixteen performances will be rescheduled, disappointing ticket holders from as far away as Oklahoma and Japan.
LONDON — Some theatergoers had plans to fly to London from as far away as the United States, Japan and New Zealand. Others had bought tickets nearly a year ago, or booked rooms in pricey hotels months in advance.
All were ready to see “Hamilton, ” which was to begin previews on the West End on Nov. 21. But producers in London announced on Friday that the previews would be delayed by two weeks, forcing 16 performances to be rescheduled.
The London production has been so anticipated that some fans have reportedly paid as much as 2,500 pounds, or about $3,300, for a ticket. (The showhas been aggressively trying to rein in scalping by using paperless ticketing.)
Angry ticketholders took to social media with a scrappiness worthy of Hamilton himself.
“What a cruel blow, ” Shaun Lowthian, a comedy writer, wrote on Twitter.
“Absolutely gutted, ” added Emilie Mules, a self-described half-Aussie, half-English theater lover.
Producers said that previews of the show, with book and lyrics Lin-Manuel Miranda will now begin on Dec. 6, at the Victoria Palace theater, which has been undergoing a multimillion refurbishment. The official opening will now take place on Dec. 21.
The London show’s co-producer Cameron Mackintosh apologized for the delay, caused by, among other things, he said, the difficulty of renovating a theater built over huge King’s Scholars’ Pond Sewer, an active 200-year-old brick tunnel.
“It has been an extraordinary undertaking, both thrilling and fraught, ” said Mr. Mackintosh, who owns the theater, referring to “the complexity of putting what is practically a brand-new building into the shell of a much-loved historical masterpiece.”
Those who had tickets for canceled shows were to be contacted by the end of the day on Friday to arrange new seats, the production said. Tickets for the show are sold out until June 2018, though a large number of seats were being held in reserve. The reissued tickets are expected to be allocated from this cache.
This may not appease ticket holders.
“Please know that there are people all around the world flying to London to see the show and got things booked months ago, ” Ada Ning, a Chinese doctoral student studying pharmaceutical sciences in Kyoto, Japan, wrote on Twitter. In a phone interview, she said she knew the lyrics of every song on the “Hamilton” soundtrack — including her favorite song, “My Shot, ” which she sometimes sang while cleaning her home. She was so upset that she was considering canceling her trip to London altogether. “I had hoped to meet Lin-Manuel Miranda on the red carpet at the premiere, ” she said.
Effie Craven, a self-described history buff who works for a nonprofit in Oklahoma City, said that she and her husband had woken up at 3 a.m. in January to buy tickets, after having seen it last year in Chicago. She said Ticketmaster had been in touch to offer alternative dates or a refund. But she said that changing her flight to London would cost at least $1,000 — which she couldn’ t afford. “We were so excited to go to London and we are very disappointed, ” she said. “We are scrambling to see what we can do.”
Janine Gibson, the editor in chief of BuzzFeedUK, was also not amused.
“Right. So my Hamilton tickets are canceled. They’ ve had my money since January, ” she wrote in a mini-tweetstorm of discontent. “Cannot pick new performance, cannot select new seats, can fill in a form and wait up to 10 days for a response. Currently not happy.”
Referring to a song from the musical, she added: “First person to say Wait For It gets a smack in the face.”
