Kym Marsh’s Fatal Attraction show delayed as Covid hits theatre ticket sales

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The curtain was due to go up last Thursday but this has been put back until Tuesday due to poor ticket sales. Bosses at Brighton’s Theatre Royal blame ‘Covid related delays during the rehearsal period’

Kym Marsh ’s racy stage play has been clobbered by Covid – with four days chopped from the opening run.

She is due to appear in Fatal Attraction alongside fellow ex-Coronation Street star Oliver Farnworth.

The curtain was due to go up last Thursday but this has been put back until this Tuesday due to poor ticket sales.

Bosses at Brighton’s Theatre Royal blame “Covid related delays during the rehearsal period”.

A source said: “This is a crying shame, people are just so nervous over Covid.

“We saw all the cancelled bookings for Christmas parties at restaurants and the same kind of worry has filtered down to the theatres. It’s carnage.”

Tickets range from £13-£55 but just a few dozen had been sold for the opening night.

Sales have also been slow at the seven other venues staging the play over the coming weeks.

It ends its run at the Manchester Opera House in February but most seats are yet to sell.

The play is based on the 1987 movie thriller, starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, about a married man who is terrorised by a lover after a one-night stand.

Former Hear’Say star Kym, who played Michelle Connor in Corrie for 13 years until 2019, said of the play: “There is one particularly racy scene, and I must admit that’s a bit daunting.

“I’ve never had to do intimate scenes like that, so this is all a very new thing for me.

“Once I got told I was doing it, I was like, ‘Nobody needs to see this body right now’.

“I’m 45, I’ve had four children and I’ve not had an easy year with my fitness – it had to go on the back burner.”

Last month Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a £30million boost for struggling theatres, museums, orchestras and other arts organisations.

At the time, Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, said support for the culture sector “borders on the insulting”.

He added: “Businesses are failing, people are losing their livelihoods, the industry is crippled.”