To think the price of tickets for theatre are insane

[Chopbob]

I was looking to booking Beauty and the beast on stage in Manchester for my dd birthday, but omg-how expensive!!!!!
Whilst they offer a very small number of tickets for £20 each (a tiny number, all restricted views) the tickets start around £40 each and go up to £100. For a children's show. In Manchester.
A family of 4 would be looking at £160-£400 for one, single kids show.
AIBU to think this is completely insane? Or am I completely out of touch?

Join the Facebook groups

Families Who Love Theatre
All Things West End
Kids Week

And the Society of London Theatre email list.

Anyone who booked tickets for Feb half term last November/December could get some great deals for the popular shows eg Frozen/Lion King/Mary Poppins with good seats between £20-£50 no booking fee

Those seats are still available in March which in some areas crosses the Easter holidays.

In June Kidsweek tickets will go on sale. They are limited in number but last year you could get tickets for major west end shows half price.

Our local theatre was constantly ask8ng for support and donations during the pandemic. Now they're repaying thar kindness by charging most people out of going.
Doubtful they'll be helped again

I take the whole of our KS 2 from our primary school to the west end from the Midlands every year - 250 kids. It’s so important to improve cultural capital for children, by the time they leave our school they have seen 4 quality performances. We have a high number of children who go into study drama and our end of year productions are legendary because they have something to aspire to. We have done it for the past 8 years (only missed one year because of covid). Going to see Frozen in 3 weeks - we all can’t wait!

@thegreenlight if you’re in the midlands why not look at the RSC and Birmingham Rep as well? Both do shows suitable for KS2 and would be better cultural experiences than 4 west end shows.

Not better cultural experiences, different.

Matilda is an RSC show it didn’t magically become a lesser experience because it moved from Stratford to London.

but it's not the same business model as when you buy something in a shop - the theatre isn't retaining the whole transaction like a shop is.
@throughtheair but a shop is only really charging a markup on goods it bought wholesale. Why can't theatres just roll the cost of booking into the advertised price?

availablesizerange because local theatres won’t cater to groups our size with reduced tickets due to shorter runs. We take small groups the the RSC and ballet, usually pupil premium or particular interest groups, but we have to go to the west end to get group rates for such large numbers.

@DdraigGoch

but it's not the same business model as when you buy something in a shop - the theatre isn't retaining the whole transaction like a shop is. *@throughtheair* but a shop is only really charging a markup on goods it bought wholesale. Why can't theatres just roll the cost of booking into the advertised price?

Because shops buy the goods to resell. They own them at the point of sale.

Apart from in house productions you might get at the smaller theatres they never own the tickets.

There used to be a problem with agents before booking fees were made transparent. Eg

Front stalls tickets might be £50. But the ones at the very end are £30 because the view is side on.

Theatre A sells Front Stalls at £50 plus £2 booking fee and the side ones at £30 plus £1 booking fee

Ticket agent B advertises Front Stalls for £35. It’s really £30 plus £5 booking fee but they don’t make it clear they are the cheaper side seats so customer thinks they are getting a bargain compared with Theatre A.

This used to happen a lot with those little pop up ticket booths.

I got a cheap matinee ticket to see it because the seat was alone. It was wonderful and I definitely didn't think of it as a kids show. Despite the over 6 guidance, there were plenty of toddlers in Belle dresses there who were bored / scared / shouting and crying 🙄

@thegreenlight that’s such a shame, we used to go to the RSC all the time with my school. Not even that long ago!

availablesizerange did you take 250 children at once though? As I said, we take year groups and small groups to RSC to watch productions and do workshops and have performed on the stage there twice.

Well if a production electrician is earning a minimum of £1000 a week, that may explain some of the ticket prices.

It's a skilled job. Normal household electricians can easily charge £50+ an hour. They have the same qualifications but production electricians know about a lot of other stuff too.

@Comefromaway eh, I do think some experiences have more cultural value than others. I think Matilda is a good example of something that’s fun, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it has too much benefit beyond being fun. Seeing musicals now and then is great but I do think it’s best to pepper those with more innovative or complex theatre too. Just my opinion though! (Also kids all have to study Shakespeare at some point and I strongly believe Shakespeare needs to be seen on stage to be appreciated and understood properly, so I do think it’s vital all kids get to see Shakespeare performed.)

@thegreenlight I wasn’t criticising at all, and I think the groups we went in weren’t 250 size so makes a lot of sense. Love that you take them though - I went for the first time when I was in KS2 and it changed the course of my life, and I ended up going to every RSC performance between the ages of 16-18 when I could get their £5 tickets and still lived in Stratford. Your school kids are lucky

I looked at tickets for Cabaret very recently... £250 a ticket! A quarter of a grand!

And when you have to factor in things like train fare, station parking, maybe a hotel room... You could have had a week away, for the same price as a 3 hour show... Bonkers.

@DdraidGoch but theatres don't buy shows wholesale and then sell them on like a shop. The theatre is a venue hosting the production, independent to the production company. As I said before theatres have to be transparent that their booking fee is separate, it cannot be rolled into one ticket price.

Cabaret is a bit different than the norm though. Half the stalls are missing and the expensive seats you are at a table, immersed in the performance as though you are AT the Kit Kat club. The ushers have to attend rehearsals as they are part of the show.

(Also kids all have to study Shakespeare at some point and I strongly believe Shakespeare needs to be seen on stage to be appreciated and understood properly, so I do think it’s vital all kids get to see Shakespeare performed.)

Possibly a heinous comment on a thread about the theatre, but I've never understood why Shakespeare is still compulsory? Hasn't anyone else written anything as good in the last 500 years?

I've been to see Cabaret, in one of the"cheap" seats, £90 for the back of the stalls but still had an amazing view as it's such a small theatre.
I'd honestly say it was great value for money, Eddie Redmayne was incredible.

However it's definitely not a family show, and clearly the people at the really expensive dinner seats were making it into a huge occasion ( and so it should be at £250+ per ticket). I guess many people have been unable to go abroad and celebrate special birthdays or anniversaries over the past couple of years, so this is a good opportunity to have an amazing evening.

Apparently there are tickets from £30 although I've never seen one available.

And the same for premier league football games, if you can actually get tickets. Nearly always need to be a season ticket holder.

I tried for Chelsea - think it was going to be something like £800 for our family, for a 90 min game....

Found a resale option cheaper, but you needed to be a season ticket holder to buy them.
There is a thread running currently about children from poorer backgrounds not achieving....and needing to be inspired, have high aspirations...we can see why that is difficult.

We have managed to take our kids three times to see West End shows throughout their childhood and that will probably be it now. It is just too expensive for all four of us to go. My tip is to study the seat plans and read all the seat reviews and be ready to pounce when they get released. The first time we went, we got cheap seats up in the gods to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I thought no seats could be that bad, but I was wrong. It was boiling hot, we had a bar in the way, no leg room and the stage was a mile away. We didn't enjoy it. I got a lot more savvy after that. But even now I'm usually dealing with limited view seats and sacrificing one side or the top of heads. It was a revelation to me when me and my friend went to watch the Book of Mormon and had really good seats. What a totally different experience. Anyway no you are not wrong. As usual it is the haves and the have nots. I'm really glad that kids are getting school trips and getting to go

Restricted view can be amazing (although not necessarily suitable for family groups). DH and I saw Hamilton in London in 2019 and after doing a lot of research about the seats and the staging of the show, got tickets which I think were £37.50. We only missed the very far left of the stage where not much happened. But we essentially had our own box, at the interval you can get out quickly to the toilets or the bar, and overall I think was a much better experience than if we'd paid full whack sat crammed into the stalls.

I could book the following tickets to local shows in the next month:

Fascinating Aida for £26.50
Jack, Jill and the Landfill for £7.50 (kid's show, also advertising The Snow Queen for Christmas for the same price), found a few other kids shows at the different thatres all around the same price
The Importance of Being Earnest £16 (at a tiny but very historic theatre)
The Invisible Man £16
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. NT show, tickets from £15

That typo though 😂😂

I agree, I enjoy the theatre and don't mind as a treat.

What gets me is people treat it like the cinema, phones out, getting drunk, talking through etc.

worst I had was watching will young in Cabaret.. end scene really poignant and moving then two women started whooping as they saw will young's naked bottom... was such bad taste and timing.