We’re used now, sadly, to paying top whack for seats for West End and Broadway shows, where ticket price inflation has now spiraled out of control nearly as fast as the Zimbabwe dollar. But, just as in Zimbabwe, there’s a whole alternative economy that operates beneath the official one, and top prices are really only paid by either the unwary or uninformed, or for a tiny proportion of shows that are actually doing sell-out business like the current David Tennant/Catherine Tate Much Ado or Kevin Spacey Richard III (which I walk past regularly and always see a returns queue at from mid-afternoon onwards).
But in the regions, where there’s considerably less choice and competition, some theatre producers are clearly taking the opportunity of hoping that demand outstripping supply for some shows to make up the profits they’re failing to make in town.
Seeing the opening of the tour of Legally Blonde — the Musical at Liverpool Empire last night - and yes, it’s another example of re-visiting a show I’ve seen several times before that I was highlighting only yesterday — I was astonished to see that the ‘premium seats’ are going for a whopping £59.50, and the bottom price is £18.50.
But there’s no Tkts booth in Liverpool to offer, as this show regularly does in London and was doing just yesterday, tickets at a reduced £45 top if bought in Leicester Square or Brent Cross. Visit Theatremonkey, however, and you can find a discount offer to currently book tickets in advance for Legally Blonde for £39.99 for best available top (non-premium) seats, or £25 in the upper circle (down from £38.50).
In a blissful comic irony, Liverpool audiences can in fact take advantage of an offer to see Legally Blonde in the West End for a cheaper price than they’ve just seen it at home, with an ad in the programme offering top price tickets for £45 by quoting ‘Programme’. But picking up a bunch of flyers for forthcoming shows at the Liverpool Empire, I see that Legally Blonde is far from the most expensive show ahead: the contagion of “premium” seating has spread here elsewhere, with a premium price advertised for £75 for the tour of Dirty Dancing.
Are commercial theatres actively trying to drive their audiences away? By contrast, the local Liverpool Playhouse is offering a pre-West End run for The Ladykillers, moving immediately to the Gielgud, in November with a top price of just £25. In the re-opened Playhouse Studio, tickets for the world premiere of The Swallowing Dark in October, meanwhile, are just £10.
There is, of course, a difference: Liverpool Playhouse is funded, so they don’t have to make all their revenue at the box office. And ticket prices, of course, have to go up as costs rise. But there’s a difference between meeting those and exercising sheer greed, that can and will eventually drive audiences out.
In other intriguing news, I see that a new musical version of Rebecca — once heavily tipped for the West End’s Shaftesbury Theatre, though it was never announced or confirmed for there despite some reports that suggested it was — is now heading straight to Broadway, where it will open next April.
But here’s a fascinating fact: according to the New York Times, the $16m budget has been scaled back to around $12m, “largely thanks to the loss of a collapsing staircase special effect.” Yet the cancellation of the West End plans to open at the Shaftesbury themselves collapsed “when the producers began a preliminary excavation under the stage of the Shaftesbury Theatre, only to see its basement fill with water. The excavation and other building modifications were considered to see if the theater could handle the show’s climax: A blazing fire that so consumed Manderley that a major part of the set, a grand central staircase, would collapse beneath the stage.”
Now that the effect has been dropped from the Broadway production in any case, we could have had it here first, after all. As it happens, I was having dinner with a friend in Liverpool last night who actually saw the show’s Vienna premiere, complete with collapsing staircase, and he confirmed how spectacular it was. The show’s Broadway producer Ben Sprecher tells the New York Times, “It would have been a phenomenal special effect, but it kept proving to be a gigantic and costly obstacle. But we’ll still have a large revolving staircase, and we’ll still have a fire unlike any Broadway has ever seen.” It seems incredible to me to sell a show on what it doesn’t now have, just as it was amazing that it was ever reported for a West End theatre that never happened, either. They’re keeping mum on what will replace the missing effect: “We don’t want to say too much so we don’t spoil the magic”, the producer tells the paper, “but rest assured we are going to burn Manderley eight times a week.” Let’s just hope they don’t burn $12m putting it on at all.
Do these prices include booking fees? Or is that extra?
Well done for raising the premium seats issue again. You know that this is something close to our hearts and @chrismi1 !
@BargainTheatre on Twitter often posts good deals - usually I see them AFTER we have bought our seats. We did try one of the deals (Two for the price of One on 'best available' seats) we ended up in the back row of the circle! Not good for people who like to be in the 4th row of the stalls.
I dread to think how much we spend of theatre tickets each year - still, it's a hobby and gives us a great deal of pleasure. I just resent paying silly prices for 'premium seats' when these are sold off cheaper a few days before on the Net or sold as £20 'Day Seats'.'
Two things, Mark.
1) I wonder if there's much of a correlation between distance from London and premium pricing? Though it's often difficult to persuade people to leave London to go to the theatre, I would imagine that there's as much traffic coming into town for a grand day out as there's ever been. When I lived in Cheltenham it was certainly a commutable distance, and was a viable day out for a treat, so say thirty or forty miles around the capital must surely be 'commutable', and thus I wonder if people would actually go to their local theatres if they had premium pricing, or think, 'what the hell, for that price I can see a show in the West End.'
2) By the same token, I would suggest that people who would like to go and see a show like 'Legally Blond' in Liverpool might be going to see far fewer shows in the year, and thus would be willing to pay top dollar for the privilage. I was brought up in a household where you'd maybe go and see a panto in Birmingham at Christmas, but there was certainly no regular habit of theatre-going, and that trip had to last you for many months into the following year.
Just a thought...
Richard,
I think by "premium seating/pricing" we are talking about good seats in stalls. I don't mind Billy Elliot having a couple of row/aisle seats priced at £85 (well they do include a 'free' program) and then most of the stalls are normal prices.
It's when the theatre has most of the stalls as Premium seating, so to get a good seat you have to pay a lot more (this happened in Umbrellas and Betty Blue Eyes).
As I suspected (see #1) - the Premium Tickets can't actually be bought for £59.50 - there's a £4.50 PER TICKET "administration charge".
So they're £64 each!
Ticket prices are high everywhere. The West End, Broadway, even touring productions. There's some sort of balance that's hard to maintain between making the art accessible and turning a profit. As you mentioned though, the one saving grace is that there are discount codes that you can find to help save a little bit. Broadwaybox.com is a great option...they've got tickets for shows on the West End, Broadway and even Las Vegas. It's definitely a better alternative than paying full price when you don't have to.
Gutted Legally Blonde is closing - do you think high ticket prices were a factor?