“My show ain’t ready,” the star tells fans, one night before her concert series was due to begin.
Image source, Adele / Instagram
Adele has postponed her entire Las Vegas residency, just 24 hours before the opening night.
“I’m so sorry, but my show ain’t ready,” the star told fans in a tearful update on Instagram.
“Half my team have Covid and it’s been impossible to finish the show,” she said, adding that “delivery delays” had also played havoc with her plans.
She was due to play the first of 24 planned shows at the Caesars Palace’s Colosseum on Friday, 21 January.
Announced late in November, the Weekends With Adele series was scheduled to have the singer performing two shows every weekend until April.
Tickets ranged from $85 (£60) to $685 (£500), and Adele was forecast to make more than £500,000 per show.
They would have been her first live concerts in five years. Along with two dates in London’s Hyde Park this summer, they are the only shows she has announced to promote her blockbuster fourth album, 30.
Speaking on Instagram, Adele said she had been “awake for 30 hours” trying to rescue the production, but she had simply “run out of time”.
“It’s been impossible to finish the show,” she added. “I can’t give you what I have right now and I’m gutted.”
Adele also apologised to fans who had already arrived to Las Vegas for the opening weekend.
“I’m sorry, it’s last minute. I’m so upset and I’m really embarrassed and I’m so sorry to everyone that’s travelled again.
She added: “We’re going to reschedule all the dates, we’re on it right now. And I’m going to finish my show. I want to to get it to where it’s supposed to be [but] We’ve been up against so much and it just ain’t ready.”
The star was previously forced to cancel the final two dates of her previous tour, at Wembley Stadium in 2017, after damaging her vocal cords.
While Adele has apparently been beset by production problems and illness within her crew, other Vegas shows have been running as normal.
Three weeks ago, Katy Perry smoothly rolled out her own residency on the strip, to largely positive reviews.
Her elaborate and playful production – which she has dubbed “Perry Playland”- includes oversized talking furniture, a giant red rocking horse, a dancing alarm clock and a bra that serves beer on tap.
Billboard magazine described the two-hour show as “part fantasy, part hallucination and thoroughly high-camp”, while the Las Vegas Review-Journal called it a “glorious example of what an unbridled imagination can achieve”.
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