One singer, one storied London theatre and an audience packed with famous faces. An Audience with Adele, a 2021 music documentary directed by Liz Clare, captures a single night at the London Palladium in which the multi-Grammy-winning British artist performs Easy On Me and songs from her album 30 before a crowd that includes Emma Thompson, Samuel L. Jackson and Idris Elba.
What is An Audience with Adele about?
The concept is spelled out in the title. Rather than a stadium tour or a studio session, the programme brings Adele to the stage of the London Palladium for a concert built around intimacy: a seated audience of fans, friends and public figures, and a set that pairs the chart-topping single Easy On Me with other tracks from 30, the album she was introducing at the time. The format leaves room for Adele's voice and for her presence in front of a room that knows her, so the result is both a record of a live performance and a portrait of an artist in a theatre she can fill on her own. Across sixty-nine minutes the special stays with that one venue and that one night, with the songs and the crowd providing the structure.
About the cast
Adele is the centre of everything, but the credited line-up reads like a guest list: Alan Carr, Emma Thompson, Samuel L. Jackson, Idris Elba, Emma Watson, Olly Alexander and Catherine O'Hara all appear, part of a Palladium crowd drawn from the singer's friends, admirers and fellow performers. Their presence is a reminder that this is a special rather than a conventional concert film; here the audience is part of the show.
Context & significance
Liz Clare directed the special, which is credited as a United Kingdom production from 2021. Its title follows a familiar British television formula: a star, a theatre and an invited celebrity crowd. The timing matters, too. The set is built around Easy On Me and 30, so the programme functions as a document of that album's launch period rather than a career retrospective. The documentary and music labels reflect a running time of sixty-nine minutes given over almost entirely to performance, and the special was warmly received on release.
Watching An Audience with Adele on Ktime
An Audience with Adele streams on K-Time, a service whose interface is in Farsi for the Iranian diaspora. This page is free to read, but you will need to sign in with a K-Time account to watch. The special plays in its original English audio, with Adele's songs and stage talk heard exactly as recorded.