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Adele cancelled her first Las Vegas show as part of her residency in January, the day before the concert was due to happen, leaving fans who spent small fortunes on tickets in the lurch.
At the time she cited problems stemming from COVID-19 and “delivery delays,” nervously saying “I’m so sorry, but my show ain’t ready.”
But there was more to the delays than meets the eye.
Mostly, as sources close to Adele have said, the residency was “heading for disaster” already with the singer’s “explosive arguments” with A-list set designer Esmeralda (Es) Devlin.
Now it turns out that Devlin, who has previously worked with the likes of Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, has been completely booted from the creative directing role in a bid to save the residency.
In her place, Adele has hired Kim Gavin, the artistic director for the English pop group Take That.
Stufish, the team producing the Rolling Stones’ upcoming anniversary tour, was also hired to help, per Page Six:
The singer now wants to start her “Weekends With Adele” residency at Caesars Palace in the summer (end of July or beginning of August) “with a completely redesigned show”.
…A source who claims to have “intimate knowledge about the shows” told the outlet that the new creative duo will “look after and develop a new show as everything from the Es show has been scrapped.”
According to the source, the drama of the “Es blow-up and the total implosion of the production” was recorded by a documentary crew and totally “exists”.
Besides Adele losing out on millions, fans have been in limbo since the originally scheduled shows were cut, reported The Telegraph.
To make matters worse for fans, they were not refunded for the tickets (which ranged from $85 to $685, with VIP packages costing $4 500 (R68 000), or $30 000 (R450 000) on secondary ticketing sites), which has caused a whole slew of problems for them:
Ticket-holders have talked about having to make “pointless trips to Vegas” as they’ve been unable to get refunds on their rooms or plane tickets.
One fan, who paid $1,000 for two tickets, told the Telegraph last week that Adele is “holding [our] summer plans hostage” as they are unable to plan anything in case she reschedules her shows and there’s a clash.
Who knows if Adele will be able to get the new set done in time and recoup all the time and money wasted on the cancellation drama.
Adele did explicitly tell Graham Norton in February that the rescheduled concerts are “absolutely happening this year, 100 per cent,” so this better work.
