The Apollo Theatre in central London on Friday after the roof collapse. (AFP)

London, Dec. 20: Nearly 90 people suffered cuts, bruises, bloodied lacerations and fractures last night when part of the ornate ceiling and chandelier inside a West End theatre collapsed on the audience below.

The accident occurred at 8.15pm after two hours of heavy rain and lightning which may have been the cause why 10 square metres of soaked masonry collapsed, bringing down the edge of one of the balconies in the 112-year-old Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue.

The emergency response included 25 ambulance crews, an air ambulance rapid response team, police officers and eight fire engines with more than 50 firefighters.

Photographs from inside the theatre show heavy beams and wood strewn across seats, which were coated in debris and dust.

Nick Harding from London Fire Brigade said: “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 19 years in the fire service.”

The theatre was packed near capacity with 720 people watching The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a hugely successful National Theatre production which began in August 2012, transferred to the West End in March this year and is now playing most nights to sell out performances.

Some 40 minutes into the play, cracking sounds were heard, then people in the stalls begin to move, followed by screams as concrete and beams came crashing down filling the theatre with thick dust.

It is fortunate that no one was killed though the police had to commander three buses to ferry the wounded to hospital.

The West End, which depends on the tourist trade, is today in a state of shock as realisation grows that other theatres, many over a hundred years old, will have to be thoroughly checked before public confidence returns.

Despite the rain the West End was full of Christmas shoppers last night. I, too, happened to be in the West End after a reception at India House thrown by the new Indian High Commissioner, Ranjan Mathai.

Actors perform during a production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. (Picture by Brinkhoff Mögenburg)

After a quick (soft) drink with a friend at the Military Club in St James’s Square, I was about to catch a tube back home from Piccadilly at 9pm but was immediately aware a major incident had occurred.

It also happens that I had been inside the Apollo Theatre last month and sat in the very seats where the ceiling came crashing down last night.

The title, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is taken from the Sherlock Holmes story, about the theft of a race horse Silver Blaze. (Gregory, a Scotland Yard detective: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”)

The play is based on a 2003 novel by Mark Haddon about a troubled boy of 15, Christopher, who has Asperger Syndrome but is brilliant at mathematics. When a neighbour’s dog, Wellington, is found speared with a garden fork, Christopher sets out to solve the murder mystery but instead uncovers a web of complicated human relationships.

Haddon tweeted: “It’s been horrifying sitting here watching what has been happening at the Apollo this evening. I’m hugely relieved that no-one has died.”

However, those inside the Apollo last night will not find it easy to forget the terrifying minutes until they managed to get out. Theatre-goer Khalil Anjarwalla, 29, from Kenya said he, his heavily pregnant wife and her parents managed to escape from the theatre safely after “kilos of concrete plummeted from the ceiling”.

Anjarwalla, who was visiting his in-laws with his English wife, Aliya, said: “The actors just seemed to run from the stage. They had obviously seen what had happened. We initially thought it was part of the show.” Chris Edwards and his son and daughter-in-law were among those injured.

He said: “I first heard cracking, then looked up to see a big part of the roof coming down. It was horrific. Larger pieces hit my younger son and he’s still in hospital with a broken collar bone and suspected damage to his spine. I tried to cover my daughter-in-law, who is pregnant, to protect her but some of the debris fell on her back. Thankfully she and the baby are safe.

“I have cuts and bruises myself, but we believe we have been very lucky. But I am really angry about this. too. It was so lucky that someone wasn’t killed.”

School worker Hannah George, 29, described the seriously injured, including a man with blood all down his arm and a woman lying on the pavement outside “absolutely covered in glass”.

Dermot Kavanagh was sitting in the balcony. “The whole row stood up and there were suppressed murmurs and shrieks and shortly after that there was this large ornate ceiling rose with a chandelier in the middle just came down and a huge brownish grey cloud of dust came up from the stalls.”

Part of the charm of London theatres, which attracts visitors from India especially, is that the buildings are so elegant and have the grace and dignity from another age.

The Apollo, named after the Greek god of the arts and leader of the muses, first opened its doors in February 1901. It has 775 seats over four levels. Some 480 of the seats are located on the stalls, dress and circle levels.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, the theatre staged performances featuring actors including John Mills, Vanessa Redgrave, Zoe Wanamaker, Peter O’Toole and Penelope Keith.

More recent productions have included roles by Rosamund Pike in Summer And Smoke (2006), Jessica Lange in The Glass Menagerie (2007), Josh Hartnett in Rain Man (2008) and James McAvoy in Rain (2009).

It has also (Hercule Poirot actor) David Suchet in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and productions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Richard III starring Mark Rylance. But the question that will now be asked is: are the theatres safe? Mark Field, Conservative MP for Cities of London and Westminster, put his finger on the problem: “Clearly quite a lot of theatre land does go back 100 years or more.”

There’s been a significant programme of renovation in the last 10 years, but given that we’ve got 40 or 50 theatres in the whole West End clearly it won’t have applied necessarily to every one of them.”

London’s economy will be badly affected if fewer people go to the theatre where tickets can cost anything between £25 and £70. It is estimated that theatres entertain over 32,000 people in central London every night.

Performances of Curious has been suspended, initially, until January 4. Boris Johnson, mayor of London, sought to reassure the millions of tourists who hope to catch a West End play as part of their London experience.

“This was clearly a terrifying incident for everyone involved,” he acknowledged.

But he added: “I would stress that although it is too early to say what caused this collapse, and whilst this was a serious incident, London’s world renowned theatre land is open for business and thousands of theatre goers will rightly be out and about tonight and over the weekend. Westminster City Council and the Society of London Theatre have assured me that all safety checks for the West End’s historic theatres are up to date, but, as a precaution, further checks have already started and will continue throughout the day.”

Andrew Cooke, Chief Operating Officer at London & Partners, the mayor’s promotional organisation for London, said: “This is clearly a very serious incident ...We would like to reassure visitors that incidents like this are extremely rare. Last year alone 14 million people attended the theatre in the capital. We welcome the fact that London theatres have said they will cooperate with authorities to reassure the public that venues are safe.”