The West End overtakes Broadway on price….

The West End has officially overtaken Broadway on (regular) price on a like-for-like basis: Hairspray, currently charging from $20-$110 (£9.70-£53.36 at today’s rates), will charge £20-£60 when it opens here in October. And Jersey Boys, currently running on Broadway with a weekday regular top price of $116.50, rising to $121.50 on weekends – i.e. £56.45 to £58.87 at current exchange rates – will open at London’s Prince Edward Theatre next March also with a top price of £60.

Of course, this leaves out of the reckoning so-called premium seats – a Broadway epidemic, ever since The Producers ushered them in six years ago – in which the best seats in the house for Jersey Boys, for instance, go for between £301.50 to $351.50. Every show on Broadway does these now – but the number of tickets involved is a moveable feast, varying from show to show (and maybe performance to performance: if they don’t sell at the premium price, they will be marked back to be sold at the usual price).

But though Jersey Boys may be overtaking Broadway over here for “regular” post-opening tickets, it is at least taking the welcome step of offering substantial preview discounts – top price during previews is just £40, a full third off the usual price. As Michael David, the Broadway producer of Jersey Boys, told Variety in a recent feature “We go with no assurances of how our show will do there. We have to have appropriate recognition that the market there is not our own.” Hence, even though they have an already tried and tested show, they are testing the waters here and not arrogantly assuming (as many Broadway producers do) that a Broadway hit will spell an automatic West End hit. (Amongst the differences they feel they have to take into account: “We’ve had conversations about what the term ‘Jersey’ means to the English. We have a considerable amount of consciousness-raising to do before we get there”, David told Variety).

If only more producers could recognise this fact and let their shows find their market – and one way to facilitate that is to let the market find them with significantly reduced prices for early performances. Yet something that was once “standard” practice has fallen into abeyance, with only Avenue Q of the recent arrivals to offer substantial discounts (and sold out during previews as a result; those low prices have, of course, as I blogged here been subsequently been reinstated for week nights in any case, proving that there is an audience for the show – just not at the typically prevailing top prices we currently have). Hairspray, by comparison, isn’t doing reduced prices for previews at all. (And the other two new musicals coming to town imminently, Desperately Seeking Susan and Bad Girls, are only offering £10 off the regular prices.)

But while we are matching Broadway for prices now, we still don’t quite match them on costs – either of capitalisation or for the weekly “nut” (i.e running costs). The weak dollar is bumping the capitalisation up a bit: according to Thomas Viertel, one of the producers behind bringing Hairspray to London, “It’s slightly cheaper, but it’s not the howling bargain it once was.”

Nor, it could be said, for audiences either, where London theatre tickets used to be so much cheaper than those on Broadway. Yet once the show is up, the weekly running costs here are considerably lower – with lower costs for everything from actors’ salaries to theatre rental and advertising rates. It means that shows in London can run safely here at lower capacities than they require on Broadway to stay afloat. But, as the transfer of The Drowsy Chaperone has just proved, sometimes even a Tony-winning Broadway hit can’t even achieve that.