The West End show Prick Up Your Ears is to close early after ticket sales dwindled when TV comic Matt Lucas pulled out of the play.

The Little Britain star, 35, withdrew from his starring role after his former civil partner, Kevin McGee, committed suicide three weeks after the play opened.

Lucas’s understudy stepped in before the Olivier and Tony Award-winning Con O'Neill was chosen to fill the role for the remainder of the run.

Despite good reviews – The Times critic Sam Marlow declared “O’Neill delivers” – producers said today that low ticket sales made continuing the play, showing at the Comedy Theatre, impossible.

"Despite very good feedback and notices for Con O'Neill's performance, the box office sales have not been sufficient to keep the show going, and so the producers have taken the difficult decision to close the show three weeks prior to its scheduled end date," a statement read.

McGee, 32, was found dead in his Edinburgh flat on October 5 after posting a message on his Facebook page which read: “Kevin McGee thinks death is much better than life.”

Lucas, who shared a six year relationship with McGee, was said to be “utterly destroyed” by his death.

The pair had dissolved their two-year-long civil union in January this year, but Lucas had admitted he still felt “very protective” of McGee.

The actor immediately made a temporary withdrawal from Prick Up Your Ears, making the move permanent a week later.

Lucas had played the emotionally demanding role of Joe Orton’s gay lover, who bludgeoned the playwright to death and then killed himself in the 1960s.

The actor received mixed reviews with The Daily Telegraph applauding his performance while The Times critic Benedict Nightingale decided that “Lucas overacts or at least tries too hard.”

The curtain will come down on the play for the last time on November 13.

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