What’s value for money in the theatre? And, since critics rarely pay for our tickets, how would we know anyway? Still, in an interesting blog on The Guardian website, Lyn Gardner – who has before told us about buying tickets for her family to see Hairspray which she hadn’t got press tickets for, as she wasn’t reviewing it – poses the question when she compares the cost of seeing two shows against their running times: a 75-minute (including interval) double-bill, The Family Plays at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs (with a ticket price of £15) and the 6.5 hour double-bill of Nicholas Nickleby at the West End’s Gielgud Theatre (for which she reports that mid-price tickets for both parts would set you back £65, working out at under £11 an hour).
Lyn then suggests, “Such calculations are, of course, a complete absurdity because good value in the theatre is not entirely based on price. I enjoyed The Family Plays rather more than I enjoyed Nickleby, which is essentially Les Mis without the singing and goes on for a long time and then goes on some more. I wouldn’t want to see Desperately Seeking Susan even if it was free, and clearly I’m not alone which is why it is closing on Saturday after just a few weeks.”
This contains a salient point: most theatres live and die by their box offices (though in the subsidised sector the commercial imperative may be cushioned a bit); and the ultimate barometer of whether people think something is worth paying for is whether or not they actually do. (Confession time: with Desperately Seeking Susan rushing to an early death this weekend, I’m actually paying to see it again at its last matinee, as I’m intrigued to see it away from the glare of the first night and try to understand its subsequent negative reception, my own included).
Mel Brooks, sure that he had created another Producers-style monster hit before Young Frankenstein had even opened on Broadway last month, pushed the boat out – and ticket price higher than it had ever been before – by instituting a premium $450 ticket; but are people actually buying them? (Since Young Frankenstein, unlike the rest of Broadway, has also elected not to report its weekly grosses, nobody actually knows. But should they not sell at that price, I imagine the tickets will be marked back down to the “regular” price of $120 to offload them – and in turn, some of those locations may even end up at the half price booth in time, so therefore sell for $60).
But if high ticket prices are one way of monitoring, and cashing in on, the laws of supply and demand, the Donmar may have handed some unscrupulous people a cash cow by charging their regular prices for their current production of Othello (with a top price of just £29) that are now changing hands at up to £1,200 each. According to a press release from Viagogo, “Europe’s secondary ticketing company” (ie. re-sale merchants that negotiates tranactions between people who want to sell tickets and those who want to buy them), “On average tickets to Othello have resold at 47 times higher than the face value. Eric Baker, CEO, viagogo said: ‘We’ve always known that the most dedicated fan is willing to go to the end of the earth to get hold of that golden ticket. viagogo’s research shows that it’s not just football or rugby world cup tickets British people covet, but a top performance of Shakespeare is just as big a pull.’”
The exclusivity of this event, and the lack of supply to meet the demand, has created a rather unsavoury situation in which the Donmar more than ever is going to be perceived as a club for initiates only (or those with either the money to buck the system or prepared to put in the time and effort of queuing for the ten day seats that the theatre releases on the day; the nephew of an American friend queued from 5.30am, and was third in line). Even Nica Burns, who used to run the Donmar in the 80s, told me the other night she can’t get a ticket!
But on a broader scale that is precisely what is happening on Broadway and in the West End: it sometimes feel like the box offices should simply post a notice, “Hello suckers”, as Velma Kelly says when she kicks off the second act of Chicago. Yet, just as Velma and Roxie spend the evening showing us ways to buck the system, the good news in the commercial theatre is that there are many ways of doing so, too, and you’ll be the sucker if you actually pay the prices demanded.
High prices, however, have another interesting side-effect: they give more power (and responsibility) to critics, who have to act as a consumer guide to audiences – is this show actually worth spending your money on? And the clearest indication of whether we think it is, of course, is the star ratings system. But they don’t necessarily allow us the light and shade that the review itself might give: a colleague last night queried my apparently generous three-star review for the Barbican’s Jack and the Beanstalk (which she had awarded one star to), but admitted she had only skimmed the words to which the rating was attached. (I, in turn, said it was a three-star review that should have probably been a two-star one, in hindsight; at which point another colleague with us re-calibrated his rating, too, from the four-stars he actually gave to three). So we’re not infallible, either.
I suppose star power will still lead people to forget about the reviews to a point anyway. If you're a fan you'll still shell out - so as long as you've got a star with enough cult status or dedicated fans you'll still have an audience. Which is why I've paid out to go and see the Jack and the Beanstalk panto at The Barbican despite all the bad reviews.
I am still finding more value in concert tickets than I tend to in theatre anymore.
There are exceptions on both sides, £10 National Theatre tickets for an astonishing production like War Horse verses Madonna going towards £200 to see her lip synch in a sweaty leotard.
Generally though for concerts you pay around £20 to £50 to the see the original singer of a song perform, usually accompanied by a huge show of musicians, dancers and sets that often shame the quality seen in the West End.
It is true that the Viagogo website does have Othello tickets on sale at £2,400 a pair. And, who knows, they may have got some nincompoops to buy them at that price.
But who would pay that price when you can get them on ebay for anything from £100 to £150 for good seats? Good King Lear tickets are available at a slightly higher price.
It's always a pity to let the truth get in the way of a good story but many critics and reporters seem to have fallen for this particular PR stunt hook, line and sinker.
In at least one case this PR piffle dominated a major critic's review. Step forward Charles Spencer - Mug Of The Week.
Whilst we shoudln't expect drama critics and arts correspondents to to be investigative reporters, I would recommend that they spend 30 seconds on the web checking out the sillier stories before they parrot them to their readers whilst at the same time delivering a hi-tech scalping operation with much much more than £2,400 worth of free publicity.
The suckers here are the journalists who covered this story without bothering to check it out. You were had my darlings.
But the people who read it and believed it were also had. This nonsense can only confirm the persistent view that theatre is expensive and elitist - which, as any serious theatregoer knows, it quite simply not true.
I'll get off my high horse now. But next time chuck the press release in the bin where it belongs.
"On average tickets to Othello have resold at 47 times higher than the face value": I simply don't believe this. As a producer notes, they're going for maybe the 7 times, without the 40, on eBay. I can think of only four possible explanations:
1) Viagogo is successful at overpriced selling to a point several stops north of miraculous;
2) Eric Baker, who runs a money-focused enterprise, can't do basic maths;
3) he's lying;
4) someone lower down the in viagogo has lied to him because they don't dare tell him the more prosaic truth.
I stress that I make no judgement as to which of these it may be more, or less, likely to be.
Ian, Mr Baker is paying a very skilled and expensive PR company, Freuds, to help him "lie". But not quite "lie" ... the tickets are listed on the webiste at £2,400 a pair and I am sure, if prevailed upon, they could produce evidence that a pair had been "sold" at that price.
IT IS A STUNT! And it is a great stunt because it worked like a dream. Every broadsheet covered this story and many of them ran quotes from "CEO Eric Baker" and mentioned his website. A few years ago Baker would have been branded a tout and scorned. Now with a dotcom, a fancy title (CEO) and a clever press agent this man is suddenly spun into an industry spokesman with authority and column inches galore!
Trebles all round!
Any sane journalist would question any information from this type of source instantly. But they don't - the story is too good to check out - the truth would spoil it.
Running news stories on this pap is one thing - a bit of fun to fill some space with zero effort. We all want to go home early occasionally. But basing theatre reviews on this rubbish is something else completely and Spencer should apologise to his readers for being a credulous numpty.
David Lister fell for it too yesterday in the Indy, boasting in a rather wet-lipped way about how he had conquered temptation to sell his (presumably free) tickets instead of seeing the show.
It may be worth pointing out that Matthew Freud, owner of the agency in question, is Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law. The connection between PR folk and Fleet Street has never been closer.