That theatre is entirely unaffordable for the average family?

Sometimes there are ways to get cheaper tickets. Disney day seats- they would sell £25 premium seats on Mondays at midday for all performances of that week. We saw Frozen on 2 different occasions in London using that deal. Hopefully it will be the same for Hercules.

We also saw Matilda in excellent seats for £25 by entering their lottery, although it took a couple of months of consistently entering.

There are other shows I’d love to see with the kids but haven’t found any ways to get cheaper tickets if sticking to weekends and school holidays. I’m always really happy when a west end show tours and comes to our local theatre (saw Six last year for a fraction of the west end price) but it’s a smaller one so isn’t included in a lot of the tours.

London shows are cheaper than anywhere, I go all the time and pay under £50 every time (most of the time I pay £25)

Yeah, this is really a London problem not a theatre problem.

It's miserable sitting in the gods though, you just see peoples heads, have to lean around the person in front who leaning around the rails.

I've take the kids to see HPATCC and frozen, both in the gods and it did take away from the experience, I thought.

I second this!

Maybe try to get day seats. Download today tix.

Yes, £80 /£100 for great views to see Hamilton. I have tried the lottery as we did not have the flexibility to go last minute but now DCs are older it is much more feasible.

ETA - £35 x4 for seats that are not great is money I’d rather not spend.

I completely agree it’s crazy expensive - but what seats are you looking at?! I’ve booked Christmas Carol Goes Wrong for a family of 5, great central seats in the stalls, 4 rows back, for £265 - £53 each.
That is a lot of money, of course, but it’s not £600!

Ive seen Hamilton 3 times.
First time paid £80 for row c in preview, lovely seats
I have won the lottery £10 for front row seat!
DC bought us some £40 tickets in the side boxes, not the greatest view but good value.

Ive seen Cursed Child 4 times.
Saw it when it came out very back of the gods for £35, not great
Won the Friday 40 twice, front row for £40
DD also became a expert at getting last minute tickets cheap ,so stalls for £30 etc

Regents Park Open Air theartre has some great productions which are not too expensive. Shucked was so much fun.

We go to the theatre a lot, but our 2 dcs are autistic, so we can get free carer tickets for DH and I and just pay for the dcs tickets. Definitely wouldn't go as often at full price. We use other discount schemes too - a theatre mailing list
for low income families, cheaper tickets for local residents, seat filler mailing lists. There is Kids Week on at the moment although we tend not to use that because it's better for us to use a carer discount. There are various last minute schemes too for different shows - that doesn't work for us as we need time to prepare the dcs, but it's often good value.

That is a lot of money. I tend to support my local theatre where tickets are a lot cheaper. some of the poductions are the local am dram society and some are semi professional.

We are seeing it in Bath front row of the lowest balcony and I think the tickets were £53 each , it is just the London shows that are expensive . We actually live in the SE but rarely go into London for the theatre as I’d rather go elsewhere and have a night away , which probably works out cheaper as well .

Never heard of it being so expensive. Around £50 for a good seat. So it is a special treat for most folk

Which show is that for?

As everyone says, ticket prices vary hugely. I rarely pay more than £100 in London, and that's for a good seat. It's the hotel and train that bumps up the cost 😂
Plus it all depends on what you value. Some people happily pay a lot for football tickets - I wouldn't. Or takeaways - I'm 60 years old, and I've never ordered a takeaway. Or trips to Disney - you couldn't pay me to go there.
But I spend many hundreds every year on theatre tickets, coz it's my thing.
Point being, we all prioritise the things we value, and that's different for everyone. So it's perfectly reasonable for some families to spend a chunk of their disposable income on a show.

I’ve just booked West End shows at £35 a ticket for the stalls in kidsweek. Brilliant value. Otherwise we save up for what we want to see.
i think the theatre is worth every penny so scrimp in other areas

Try the seat filler apps - Central Tickets (free to join) and Audience Club (£5 or year). You can get some real bargains.

The West End is very expensive so give fringe, local and amateur theatre a chance.

I also use the TodayTix app, which can have cheaper seats.

I think you can definitely get cheaper tickets. I go with my kids at least a couple of times a year. I feel like the prices you're quoting must be weekend or matinee tickets. If you go on a weekday evening, you can generally get stalls for around £70 for something like Matilda - not cheap but half what is quoted in the OP for 4 people. There are also lotteries for a lot of the more popular West End plays, last minute tickets or things like Kids Week. You just need to be a bit flexible.

I’ve just bought 3 tickets for this show and paid £160 for seats with a side view. That’s in the Grand Circle so not as high as the balcony seats. The stalls were ridiculous prices!

We go to London theatre and yes, it’s expensive but not THAT expensive and I don’t want to pay for crap seats because even those can cost £100 for all for us.

It’s usually £200-300 for 4 of us. Most we spent was £400 to see Hamilton in the circle and the view was great.
HP & The Cursed Child is £600 for four but, tbf, it is effectively two plays - we haven’t seen it yet as I can’t quite justify the cost.

Completely agree. We don’t live in London but have been talking about taking our children to see a show. It’s £600 for Matilda, Frozen, The Lion King or something similar.

That’s not including trains for the four of us or a hotel or dinner. We could easily do a matinee and come back the same day. It’s not even that we can’t afford it. I could afford £600 but it’s just the madness of it. £600! Friends of our took their 5 year old daughter to see Frozen, caught the train from Gloucester, had dinner, stayed in a bang average hotel = £1200

We see the Christmas Panto in our home city and it’s £100, I can cope with that, but how some families afford it I do not know.

The National do some brilliant stuff. Glad to see the rot apparently hasn’t spread everywhere. Hope it never does.

West End/musicals are thankfully not my cup of tea but London prices are shocking. Vienna state opera is typically a lot cheaper than Covent Garden - probably with flights! Theatres are much more competitively priced further north. £600 is mad - but just look at the context. Arts funding is being cut so far to the bone there will soon be nothing left to cut. Opera North in Leeds - a world class company - have had to resort to using orchestral recordings rather than a live orchestra, which is a travesty. The Arts and Humanities Research Council predictably has the smallest pot of UKRI funding available.

The message doesn’t seem to be hitting home that preserving cultural heritage takes investment. A culturally impoverished nation is an impoverished nation.

Theatre local to us is not that expensive. We do about 6 shows a year and are on a fairly average income. Usually £20-30 a ticket for good seats.

Central tickets is another site but usually for short notice availability and the Tkts booth in Leicester Square (also online).