"Elitist" theatre ticket prices

[KenAdams]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65160984.amp

Sir Derek Jacobi has said that theatre prices are becoming elitist. I'm inclined to agree.

Prices are eye-watering now and I'm in the Midlands! Restricted view seats for £60! Some London shows are ridiculously priced.

Are you finding the same where you live?

I paid £80 per ticket in Manchester for The Lion King. The seats are far too low to the ground and close together the view wasn't anything to rave about.

The cinema has better seats than the theatre.

Tickets for away games in the Premier league are capped at £30 but they can be difficult to get as you need to be able to show through your club FAN number / membership that you have attended a home game - and tickets for home matches can be more expensive / harder to get depending on the match.

ROH varies a lot depending on the production. La traviata or La Boheme with big name stars is going to be ££££ and sold out.

However pick something less well known and the prices fall. We saw an outstanding production of Jenufa but because Janacek isn't as popular (he should be!) the seat prices were much less and we could get out of the nosebleed seats and had a fabulous time.

Maybe not one for children though as the plot revolves around a dead baby in a frozen river.

I havent rtft, but I disagree.

I take DD to the west end 6-10 times a year and we always get cheap seats, often no more than £20.

Last year we saw the Glass Menagerie, To Kill a Mockingbird, Evan Hansen (the cheapest seats for this were £9) amongst many others.

All for around the £30 a seat mark.

If you want to go to London theatres it is very accessible.

On the other hand, the cheapest tix at our local theatre at £30 and rising, we therfore go to London instead.

The only thing I have paid more for is Streetcar tix with Paul Mescal £47 each because I was panicking the page would freeze when I was booking them! And Hamilton as it was a Christmas present and we had the £100 mid circle tix.

There were even tickets available for A Little Life two weeks ago that were under £30, I got a ticket alert while I was at work, but DD and I decided that even for James Norton naked, 4 hrs at the the theatre would be too much!

We go to the theatre 20+ times a year and I'm poor (not because of the theatre habit, honest). Prices aren't too bad where I am, starting from £13 and often in the first few rows near the stage even for big productions like Shrek or Ian McKellan's Mother Goose. They're often advertised as restricted view but they're fine. Sometimes front row seats for the ballet are as low as £10, mainly for Russian companies which are much better imo. Other theatres are the same fairly reasonable price wherever you sit. Philharmonic classical family concerts are under £30 in total for an adult and child.

I do splash out for special shows because once you've been front row for Six, aisle seats in the Lion King or rinkside for Disney on Ice you can't go back! We went front row for Frozen last week which was only about £79 each and worth every penny but Hamilton ticket prices were extortionate on the days we were in London and the view from the £20 slips was fine tbh. We've got £13 tickets for Hamilton in Manchester at Christmas too so will catch up on the roughly 2 minutes we couldnt quite see properly then.

I've just checked also, we saw Bonnie and Clyde at the Arts theatre last year on opening preview night for £34 for both of us. We had a perfect view.

I also got an Amelie tix for my DD for £15, she was in the front row and adored it

I think the difficulty is that a lot of the cheap ticket schemes now rely on having flexibility and being able to go last minute - so Friday rush, TodayTix etc. Having said that I’m not too sure how different this is from the past, many years ago as a student I used to get loads of last minute theatre tickets by queuing on the day, and I suppose at least now it is online.

Some theatres also run their own schemes if you sign up - for example I got a great seat for to kill a mockingbird for £15 on their ‘All Rise’ scheme. The other option of course is to try and book as soon as released - but that can be tricky particularly with new productions. It’s also easier if you are going alone as single tickets pop up. For shows with really great reviews or have transferred ( say A Little Life/Streetcar) Twickets is also worth a look - as people have to resell at the original price booked a

I think it’s an interesting question whether needing this insider knowledge ( and time) is also in itself elitist? Perhaps this is balanced by the various schemes to attract younger audience with cheap tickets ( for example some seats at the donmar are reserved for their under 30s reduced price deal).

It’s a really tricky question - I absolutely love theatre, it’s the reason I moved to London as a student many years ago and stayed.

I actually think ironically ROH is actually the best for cheap tickets! If it’s a short ballet the stalls circle standing remain a complete bargain.

I also wish culture vulture section of mumsnet was busier! Would love to discuss theatre productions on here 😄

It is partly because London theatre prices are still pretty good value for international visitors: partly because of a weak pound but also because Broadway prices in particular are actually insane. When Hamilton opened in the West End my American family came over to see it with us: the combined cost of return flights from NY and very good seats in the circle was cheaper than the comparable seats on Broadway.

The other thing to bear in mind is if you are going to one of the modern theatres then cheaper seats are usually fine - for example the National or Barbican. I was at soho place recently up in second balcony and it was still a great view, the Bridge is similar - I’d argue there aren’t really ‘bad value’ seats in either of these theatres.

Older theatres I am much more careful (Harold Pinter and Apollo Shaftesbury being particularly bad IMHO!).

For those saying that gigs are too expensive (and you’re talking about some of the biggest artists in the world here), there’s a huge infrastructure that needs to be funded

• staging
• PA
• lighting rigs and video walls
• promoter and agent fees
• musicians
• crew including lighting, sound and tour managers who will absolutely be top of their game and therefore command a premium
• transport for probably over a hundred people on a tour like Taylor’s
• catering

It quickly adds up! Most tours are lucky to turn a profit.

Theatre is expensive, but then the cost of a production compared to how many people can get into a theatre means it has to be, unfortunately.

I'm actually quite fed up of opting for cheap theatre seats and being uncomfortable. It annoys me that in a cinema you can pretty much guarantee a comfy seat and a good view, but not in the theatre. Maybe I'm frequenting the wrong theatres.

I do think there should be more opportunities to school trips to the theatre. I know it's a pain for the school and not cheap, but I've met adults who've told me they've never been to the theatre. I think surely it should be part of every child's education. I went to the opera with my primary school in the 80s. I've never been to the opera since, but it was an absolutely brilliant experience.

English National Opera at the London Coliseum -free tickets for good seats for under 21's, cheap for under 35's , starts at £10 for everyone else - sellout shows , amazing singers and orchestra, great venue, no snobbishness. best value in the West End and bigger shows if you are into music theatre of any kind. huge range of stuff.

Group theatre deals can really be a bargain though.

I've started going on coach trips to London to see shows and have seen some amazing productions for £40 a ticket including the coach.

Travelling by train into London is £50 before I've been bought my theatre ticket.

It's much nicer after the show being picked up from the door too n

We're planning a trip down to London - as a family holiday and knew it would be expensive but we looked at some shows while there - there's five of us and we just can't afford it. We are now looking at the Globe and groundling tickets or possibly prom performances.

Obviously we don't have the local knowledge to access cheaper tickets or have as much flexibility in our short stay. Even based were we are we don't go that often as frankly it's still expensive.

Perhaps the kids will get lucky as manage as we did in our 20s to get cheap tickets in cities we were in. But given the last few years if they are getting bums on seats at those prices it clearly a working business model.

It's definitely a lot more expensive than pre covid, but I don't know if they're actually getting the audiences here.

Pre covid we were members of the theatre, we paid about £40 a year and got half price tickets for most performances on a Tuesday night. We would go to just about everything as tickets were around £25- 30 so with a pre theatre meal out at the BYOB Thai, it was a reasonable mid week night out. DH also enjoyed a pre a mid performance drink, so they were getting the profits from that as well.

Post covid tickets have gone up to around £37 and the discount is only 20%. They often have last minute discount for seats, but I like to know in advance what I'm doing so we rarely go any more unless it's something I am really keen to see.

I get they need to put their prices up, but suspect they have out-priced their core audience so doubt they are making any more money than before. We use Tesco vouchers to buy an annual cinema membership instead.

The other aspect of elitism that was picked up in several speeches at the Oliviers of course is access to a career in the arts in the first place - and the lack of funding for youth theatres etc. A problem for a long time ( I recall when I tried to get even get into theatre management years and years ago it seemed to need a lot of unpaid internships that I certainly couldn’t afford to do. Or maybe I wasn’t committed enough!). It does feel like this is more acute now ( despite what feel like higher seat prices). I think this is also combined with a huge reduction in arts/creativity in the primary curriculum ( increasingly focussed on SATs and core subjects).

I don’t know what the answer is, as appreciate there are split views on how important the arts are to society.

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You don't need local knowledge: you have MN.

@diflasu thats probably how we differ, I am usually going with DD15 not as a family. She is a theatre fan, she is a singer (a very good one) and so lives and breathes musical theatre and drama.

She is on all the twitter accounts of all the Broadway shows and off Broadway shows and so always knows when things are coming to London.

Eg. Last month I got a text from her 'hades Town, London transfer, 2024' I will then go on the pre ticket sale alert list and book them the minute they come out. This way I can get the cheapest seats with the best view. There is a hierarchy of restricted view seats!!

So I'm not trying to pick an established show to see as a family, I'm simply keeping a teenager happy, much easier!

Also, For her its all about niche, off Broadway or off West end. The geekier the chat about the show, the better. So we go to a lot of things which are new or not massively commercial. Again, easier to get tix.

It can be done. It can be done cheaply. DS's ambition is to be an actor on west end stage and who loves to go to the theatre.

We get cheap tickets - book when they're first released, we get restricted view n(getting to know which are going to spoil the performance and which aren't (saw My Neighbour Totoro at Barbican and could only see half the stage which was not so good).

We have joined theatre mailing lists that send offers and seat filling opportunities.

We enter the lotteries that most theatres offer and we have been lucky to get Harry Potter & The Cursed Child tickets and Cabaret through the lottery - £25 for stalls to see Cabaret which are normally £200+!!!

There is some amazing stuff out there and you can get tickets affordably.

You just have to plan a little. We have seen so far this year for the price of a takeaway and we're only just out of March.

Noises Off £30 each (the most expensive tickets I have bought for a while)
Macbeth £5 each
The Mind Mangler £20
Local Youth Theatre £10
The Unfriend £22
Harry Potter £40 (£20 per part - Friday 40 lottery tickets).

We have tickets booked for the new Stranger Things one, Rocky Horror Show, Groundhog Day, and Dr Simmelweis in the next few months - and I will keep an eye out for bargains and offers.

The big shows can be pricey but deals are out there - Wicked for less than £5 each, Lion King for £20 something both stalls (both disappointing). Matilda stalls £25. TBH I am not interested in Hamilton or Lloyd Webber as not my kind of thing. I would have liked to see Streetcar but you can't win them all...

We do have the bonus of living in London and so we don't have to factor in travel or accommodation - but I know that many of the seat filling and bargain ticket sites also work for the regional theatres.

Theatre has always been this way - as a child when my parents took me, we'd look down on the people in the stalls from the back of the highest balcony and wish to be closer, but my parents couldn't afford it. It didn't stop us from loving it, it didn't affect our enjoyment of the show.

If you are taking kids - take them - they will still love it, don't worry about only taking them if you can get 'good' seats - any seat is better than not taking your child to the theatre at all...

100% agree... and even before COVID (that some people are using to make excuses for the exorbitant ticket prices,) theatre tickets were still crazy prices.

My daughter offered to take me to see WICKED in Birmingham for my 50th birthday a few years ago. (mid to late 2010s.) The tickets were so expensive that I actually volunteered to pay for my own ticket. She didn't want me to but I insisted. They were £85 each for half decent seats. That was five or six years ago and that was just Birmingham. ALSO they weren't the BEST seats, just half decent. The better ones were £120 to £150 each!

As a previous poster said, if you wanted to take a family of four to a show in London and stop overnight, you probably wouldn't get much change out of 1000 pounds... just for one night/2 days. (Including the travel and the hotel and the tickets.) It's like they don't want poor people, and the working classes to go to their shows. Well more fool them - because they will end up closing down. There are more people with little money than there are with a lot now...

People can come up with all these reasons and excuses for the outrageous ticket prices, but that's what they are 'excuses...' All the things listed by a pp @Bobshhh ay 9.30am, are exaggerated. 'The crew are at the top of their game and will demand a premium...' What nonsense. They are people who are employed to do a job working on a show.

No-one is special or more worthy or deserving of super high pay. They're doing a basic job.. stage hands, lighting, rigging, catering, PA etc... Stop acting like they're special snowflakes who need to be paid megabucks as an excuse to charge crazy high prices to people wanting to see a show!!!

@PrettyMaybug we’ll have to disagree on that one. A sound engineer working on an arena show like Taylor’s or Harry Styles’ for example will have expertise and knowledge worthy of attracting a higher fee compared to someone who’s only working in tiny venues or is starting out in their career?

That’s not unique to the music or theatre industry, surely in all professions skill generally commands greater reward?

Right. Bit in order for you to be able to get these cheap tickets they have to sell hundreds of expensive tickets too.

The thing with lots of the cheap deals are that they require flexibility - which is relatively OK if you live in the London bubble, but not when transport/hotels etc come into the equation as you get further out. Likewise the regional productions - there's usually fuck all around here as we're one of those dead spot areas that tend to get forgotten.

My big gripe though - when we go we do buy pricey seats to make it worth the trip and hotel and stuff is that you're paying £150 in some cases for less fucking legroom than you get on a Ryanair flight! Hamilton I am looking firmly at YOU here - especially last time we went when the start was delayed 45 minutes and I think we were near the point of needing a can opener to be removed from the seat at the end of act 1.

I don’t know about concerts but theatre technicians/backstage etc are paid really poorly - there was a piece of research out this week showing how they are amongst the lowest paid of all jobs. The high seat prices are certainly not caused by high wages ( and even performers are paid far less generally than say in TV).

Well I've just booked Stranger Things and whilst I could have got a ticket for £20 that would have been the back row of the upper circle - I could have got tickets for £45 but those were with very restricted views or views where lighting equipment "could" be in the way. So I've got average stalls tickets for £100 so I'm more sure of what to expect view wise. It still feels like a lot - especially silly booking a year in advance!! And that was prompted by whoever came in earlier to say you have to be organised. I will never be organised enough I fear! I have bought insurance in case of train strikes too.