Oxford Playhouse has apologised after the opening performance of 1984 was cancelled at the last minute.

The theatre in Beaumont Street said that “unforeseen technical difficulties” forced the cancellation on Tuesday evening and the audience of about 600 has been offered exchanges or refunds.

Remaining performances, from company Headlong, were expected to go ahead as planned.

Spokeswoman Bethan James said: “1984 is a very technically demanding show and despite best efforts by Headlong’s team and the staff at Oxford Playhouse, we were not able to rectify the problem and for safety reasons we regrettably had to make the very difficult decision to cancel the show.”

She added: “We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our audience.”