That theatre is entirely unaffordable for the average family?

[Florally]

I love theatre. I used to book for my family of 4 regularly and really enjoy it.

My kids recently saw a poster for ‘Christmas Carol Goes Wrong’ and loved the previous shows my the company so I thought I’d book it as a surprise.

It’s insane. If you don’t want to sit in the gods it’s basically £600 for a family of four minimum.

Who can afford that for one night out??

Am I missing something here?

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

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 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.

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.

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!

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.

Maybe try to get day seats. Download today tix.

I second this!

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.

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

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

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.

Christmas Carol Goes Wrong in Glasgow, front row of Grand Circle is under £50. I think theatre tickets are quite expensive but I often go on my own so it's a treat to myself. Everything I go to seems to be sold out - theatre, musicals, ballet, opera - so enough people are affording it

Theatre is affordable. We go often. 20-30 tickets
Top shows with only limited but quick swll out seats are not. That's with everything though.
So title should read "most wanted theatre shows are unaffordable".

If you're eligible for it, it is definitely worth looking into accessibility schemes. My husband and I use this and it really brings the cost down

Totally agree. When I was a student 15 years ago, crappy seats were genuinely a bargain - £10 or £15 for a balcony seat at top West End plays and musicals. Now even the crappy seats are expensive, so I might as well spend £50 more and have a more enjoyable time.

Cheaper ways to do it - sit in the Gods, only go once a year, go on your own, don’t go to the west end - try the theatre circuit in the smaller cities where the big shows tour and the smaller city theatres where you get the good “an audience with” and less popular comedians/shows/plays touring. Then it’s doable.

DH and I used to go to London every 2 or 3 weeks 14/15 years ago when we were first going out. Couldn’t do it now. But we make sure we take DS to see something once or twice a year (child friendly and usually local) so he gets a taste for it and appreciates it when he’s older.

It's really annoying that people say 'Just sit a mile up in the air, sit behind a pillar, stand outside and squint through the window' like that in any way makes for an enjoyable experience.

It shouldn't be so expensive to just go and sit in a normal seat and watch a show that you can see with your eyes at a reasonable distance. It's prohibitively expensive for all except the most privileged families, making the arts completely exclusive. I don't agree with it and when I hear about the arts dying I just think well of course it is! Nobody can afford to bloody go!

This

BeautifulSpringSunshine Us too.we have a lovely Art Deco theatre here.of which judy Dench is patron. Also show films.10.00 a seat compared to odean at nearly twice that!. The Am Dram productions are very good.

Cinema, theatre, fish & chips are things that used to be cheap and accessible and really aren’t anymore.

I'm not in the UK but it's similar where I am. I don't fault them they deserve to be paid for the real costs, but I can't spring for tickets to big city theatre for the whole family.

It makes me a little sad, as a child we always went to a Christmas production, I don't think my kids have ever been.

These days the theatre I get to is school productions and community theatre in small towns. Which actually I have found is really pretty satisfying.

Maybe I am a tight arse but the theatre has never been cheap family day out, especially if you are on a limited income. We went to Mamma Mia in the West End about 15 years ago for DD's birthday, and even back then it really felt like I bought a kidney. On our income we could never justify paying to see big theatre productions regularly, lucky none of us a big theatre goers.

My DC used to members of Mousetrap which I think is now Go Live which is great for cheap tickets for young people, think it goes up to 30 now.

https://golivetheatre.org.uk/our-work-areas/young-people/#

Also Donmar does a scheme for under 35 and National Theatre do various schemes for younger people.

I used to live/work in London and would go to the theatre every other week - ten years ago top price would be 65.00. It's now 140.00 (check out Fiddler On The Roof at The Barbican)! I don't live in London now, it's a 2 hour journey / around 50.00 on the train so I'm not going to settle for a seat in the Gods looking at the back of other people's heads. I'm very choosy now about what I see and where I sit.

In November each year Mastercard does an annual "sale" of theatre seats in December/January and first two weeks of February. It is most shows but seats are limited. If you are a family of four, would you consider buying 2 plus 2 seats? Rather than limit yourself to a bank of 4 seats? Theatre Monkey gives great seat plans.