Photos:Accident At West End Theatre In London Where 88 People Were Injured When Ceiling Collapsed During Packed Performance.

A capacity audience was inside the theatre, which was 45 minutes into the National Theatre's performance of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time.The ceiling collapse at a major West End theatre emerged today as an investigation opened into the accident which left dozens of theatregoers injured.
Police said seven people were seriously injured and there were 81 walking wounded following the incident which happened at about 8.15pm inside the packed 112-year-old Apollo Theatre in London.
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Masonry from the Grade II-listed theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue plummeted into the stalls below, striking members of the 720-strong audience and filling the theatre with clouds of thick dust.Audience members then started screaming as parts of the ceiling appeared to cave in, with some eyewitnesses hearing a loud ‘creaking’ which some initially thought was part of the show.

It happened just over an hour after London was hit by a freak thunderstorm at about 7pm that saw a torrential downpour over the city, but it was not immediately clear if that was related to the collapse.

Two nearby theatres, the Queen's Theatre where Les Miserables is currently being shown and the Gielgud, had their auditoriums transformed into makeshift triage centres for treating the wounded.

Theatre-goer Khalil Anjarwalla said he, his heavily pregnant wife and her parents managed to escape from the theatre safely after ‘kilos of concrete plummeted from the ceiling’.