By RICHARD BORDELON
OPINION EDITOR

The evening audience of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at London’s Apollo Theatre in the West End on Dec. 19, 2013 did not get to experience the end of the Olivier Award-winning production.

Midway through the performance, parts of the ceiling began to collapse on the audience, injuring 75 people, seven seriously, according to the Associated Press.

I was in London that night, and I heard the ambulance sirens as they rushed to bring the injured from the theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue to University College Hospital in the neighborhood of Bloomsbury, a few blocks away from my flat. Ambulances and commandeered city double-decker buses rushed the injured to hospitals around the city. The sirens sounded for 30 minutes straight. All of this was the product of one night at the theatre.

This week, the Westminster Council announced that the Phantom of the Opera did not cause the occurrence. It was “century-old cloth and plaster ties holding up timber frames” that had been in place since the theatre’s construction in 1901, which had deteriorated and caused the collapse of the ceiling onto the heads of the audience below.

The next night, my family and I attended a performance of One Man, Two Guvnors at Theatre Royal Haymarket, which owes its present interior to a 1904 redesign. I would be lying if I said the thought of the ceiling falling did not cross my mind. Whenever I walk into an old theatre, even today, I am usually cautious to note emergency exits and what part of the ceiling I am below, even though the probability of a such an event occurring again is incredibly unlikely.

But, this should not be something that the theatregoer has to worry about. For the price of tickets nowadays on Broadway, which often stretches above the $130 mark, the threat of building materials falling on the audience should be nonexistent.

Nimax Theatres, the company that owns the Apollo along with five other theatres on the West End, has reassured the Westminster Council that all of its theatres are safe. Along with other major London theatre owners, including Delfont-Mackintosh, Ambassador Theatre Group and the Really Useful Group, among others.

But the question of safety could be asked of older Broadway theatres as well. The oldest continuously operating theatre is the Lyceum, which opened in 1903. Could the same happen in New York? Hopefully not.

It is still worth discussing though. Theatre owners need to be vigilant and proactive when it comes to the restoration and maintenance of their theatres. I am not endorsing the demolition of theatres in order to build modern performing spaces, as was the case with the Helen Hayes, the Morosco, the Astor, the Bijou and the Gaiety theatres, which were demolished in 1982 to make way for the Marriott Marquis Hotel and the Marquis Theatre. Theatre owners must be extra concerned with patron safety.

With a new protective deck meant to ensure the ceiling event does not occur again, the Apollo Theatre in London reopens this Wed., March 26, with the new play Let the Right One In. Let us just hope that the ceiling does not fall in.

Richard Bordelon, FCRH ’15, is a political science and history double major from New Orleans, La.