Almost 90 people have been hurt after part of a ceiling collapsed during a show in London’s West End, according to emergency services. <br /><br />The audience at the Apollo theatre was showered with masonry and debris while watching the popular play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”<br /><br />It happened on Thursday night, when the four-storey auditorium was packed with hundreds of people – including many families.<br /><br />“My husband and I were up in the balcony <br />about five rows from the front and then we <br />saw two or three people get up in the front <br />row and then very quickly the second row and <br />the third row started getting up and rushing <br />away,” recalled Hannah George.<br /><br />“For a second I thought ‘was this part of the <br />show‘ and then we heard a creak and <br />somebody screamed and shouted look out <br />and then we saw part of the ceiling collapse.”<br /><br />The collapse at the theatre, which is more than a century old, led to a busy area of central London being sealed off. <br /><br />An investigation into what happened is now underway. <br /><br />“Quite quickly we were able to establish the nature of the collapse and to confirm it’s been confined to some heavy, ornate plastering – typical of what you’d expect to find in a theatre in the West End of this age,” Graham Ellis, from London Fire Brigade, told reporters. <br /><br />Investigators say it is too early to speculate on what caused the section of ceiling to come down. <br /><br />For those in the audience, it will be a night out they will never forget – but for all of the wrong reasons.
