‘It’s licensed touting, primarily’: has sky excessive ticket pricing turned London theatre into the wild West Finish?

‘Theatres are taking the piss,” says 26-year-old aspiring actor and dedicated theatre fan Laurine. “I book tickets anyway, but hate myself for doing it.” Laurine relocated from France to London partly because of the promise of the West End, aiming to see all the shows she could. But she’s feeling more and more defeated by the battle to search out reasonably priced tickets. Not too long ago, she spent weeks coming into ticket lotteries to see one in all this summer time’s largest exhibits, Romeo & Juliet starring Tom Holland, after the primary batch of tickets offered out in simply two hours. “It was so stressful, it was like a part-time job,” she says.

Laurine ultimately landed a spot after three weeks of making an attempt, however she hasn’t at all times been so fortunate. She was determined to see Jonathan Bailey in the 2022 revival of Cock by Mike Bartlett, however when tickets rose to a “ridiculous” £400, she was priced out. And though she did handle to see Matt Smith in An Enemy of the Folks earlier this yr, she was struck by the irony of the state of affairs. “He delivers this monologue where he’s talking about capitalism and elitism and how culture is too expensive, but I could barely see him from the worst seat I’ve ever sat in, which I paid £35 for. I just felt angry.”

I do know the sensation. I need theatre to be an important artwork type with the ability to get individuals’s hearts beating in sync – a democratic area, not a rarefied, luxurious interest. However that’s more durable when getting reasonably priced tickets to its most talked-about exhibits entails a lot work. When Hamilton made its long-awaited look within the West Finish in 2017, I entered ticket lotteries for weeks earlier than I secured a seat – nevertheless it was to date above the stage that the present’s well-known choreography was diminished to a distant kaleidoscope of jiggling blobs. And after I wished to dissect Eddie Redmayne’s efficiency in Cabaret with my associates, they have been priced out by a present whose tickets topped £300.

It’s not simply followers who’re indignant. Theatre’s largest stars often rail in opposition to excessive ticket costs, regardless that they assist pay their salaries. As he ready to carry out his radical one-man Vanya final yr, Andrew Scott informed the BBC that it’s vital that theatre “does not remain an elitist art form… No matter how zeitgeisty or how modern you think your play is, if you are having to spend £150 no person between the age of 16-25 or beyond is going to be able to afford that.” Nonetheless, though the manufacturing took the novel step of opening with a efficiency solely for under-30s, with all tickets at £10, the cheaper tickets for the remainder of the run offered out quick, with the most effective seats going for £172.50. Likewise, 85-year-old Sir Derek Jacobi spoke out ultimately yr’s Olivier awards, saying that “it was much easier” to see performs in the beginning of his profession, and that theatre was turning into “elitist” when it must be “part of our blood and bones”. Summing up the present temper, a latest Guardian headline complained: “Who can afford the expensive gamble of going to see a play that you might not like?”

In 1809, Covent Backyard’s new theatre was hit by three months of viewers rioting after its supervisor John Kemble raised ticket costs to fund the venue’s restoration after a hearth. Punters booed, chanted, waved banners and wreaked all spherical havoc till Kemble capitulated and restored the previous costs. At the moment, a rebel in opposition to rising ticket prices is prone to look somewhat quieter – extra like a creeping absence of the youthful, extra various audiences that theatre’s future depends upon.

So is greed killing the West Finish? Is it turning into a luxurious playground that excludes atypical theatregoers? Are fat-cat producers amassing piles of money at audiences’ expense?

Unsurprisingly, theatre producers are eager to push again in opposition to these unfavourable perceptions. “Greed is not killing the West End,” says Patrick Gracey, chair of the Society of London Theatres (Solt) and producer of hyped latest exhibits together with Opening Evening starring Sheridan Smith and Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California. As we discuss, he clicks by spreadsheets charting the delicate balancing acts concerned in making theatre pay. “I find the headlines genuinely disappointing,” he says. “The price of a theatre ticket is driven by a combination of cost and demand. The cost of making theatre is rising faster than inflation, but ticket prices are not.”

Gracey factors me in the direction of Solt’s figures, primarily based on reporting by its member theatres. They point out a mean West Finish ticket worth of £57.31 – a 5.39% enhance on 2022, or -1.65% when adjusted for inflation – far from the bank-breaking figures making the headlines. Gracey additionally factors out that persons are keen to spend much more on different non-essentials corresponding to meals out, day journeys or live performance tickets: “The average ticket price for Taylor Swift’s tour is £206, and she will play for more people in a single night than the entire run of Romeo & Juliet,” he says.

Nonetheless, the image is much less rosy when you take a look at theatre trade newspaper the Stage’s annual survey of West Finish costs, which focuses on the most costly tickets. It discovered that the typical high ticket worth for performs rose a whopping 50% prior to now yr, from £94.45 in 2023 to £141.61 – with celebrity-driven choices corresponding to Romeo & Juliet main the cost with its high worth of £298.95 (it’s now £345). Look again a decade or so and the rise remains to be extra placing. In 2012, when the Stage started its survey, no single ticket price greater than £100. Simply three years later, The Ebook of Mormon grew to become the primary present with a high ticket worth that broke the £200 barrier. But even that looks as if a cut price in comparison with Cabaret’s array of tickets topping £300.

So what’s modified? It’s self-evident that it’s not simply the rising price of theatre. As a substitute, it’s a concerted trade shift in the direction of dynamic pricing. This very Twenty first-century strategy is impressed by 18th-century economist Adam Smith’s idea that worth is pushed by provide and demand. As a substitute of counting on mounted costs, corporations maximise income by ramping up costs when their merchandise are briefly provide.

Time Out theatre editor Andrzej Lukowski has watched this shift come into play over his 10 years within the job. “The top prices are only triggered when shows start selling exceptionally well,” he says. “For example, Romeo & Juliet went on sale with a top price of £145 – but once shows begin to sell out there’s a trend for selling the remaining tickets for insane prices [Romeo & Juliet’s top price doubled]. It’s licensed touting, essentially.”

Costs on Broadway have lengthy dwarfed the West Finish’s excesses – beginning with The Producers in 2001, which taught theatre’s real-life moneymen a factor or two by taking the then-unheard of step of providing “premium seats” for $480 apiece. Their trajectory since is extra eye-watering nonetheless. After Merrily We Roll Alongside received large on the Tony awards – together with greatest actor gongs for its stars Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff – ticket costs soared for its closing weeks, with a premium seat going for an astonishing $1,299 (£1,025).

Final week, main agent Mel Kenyon informed the Stage that “mirroring the American [pricing] model… is not a healthy model because it means you aren’t growing things from the bottom”, and that the UK expertise growth “ecosystem is broken”. Certainly, casting established stars to promote high-price tickets is now a basic West Finish strategy. When Sarah Jessica Parker starred in Plaza Suite (with husband Matthew Broderick – high ticket worth: £395), sold-out audiences appeared undeterred by what critics largely agreed was a mediocre efficiency in a dated play. As a substitute, outcrops of followers sprang up outdoors stage door eager for an opportunity encounter.

It’s arduous to not assume a connection between inflated costs and theatre’s habit to casting celeb names (a stint in 2:22: A Ghost Story has develop into a type of army service, enlisting names from Cheryl to Stacey Dooley). West Finish casting administrators are famously tight-lipped about what large names can anticipate to earn, however Gracey argues that “the star salary of an actor is not the driving force behind ticket prices – some may do it for Equity’s pay scale, some may ask a higher fee, but they’re just one piece of the puzzle. Most plays will take more than 60 people a night to make them happen, not counting the creative team and freelance personnel.”

Whereas it’s endearing that large Hollywood names are eager to check their abilities in entrance of a stay viewers (Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis’s run final December in Ulster American at Hammersmith venue Riverside Studios can solely have been motivated by the problem of a bracingly controversial play somewhat than chilly arduous money), star actors sometimes go for a comparatively transient sojourn in theatreland earlier than they’re known as again to much more profitable gigs in TV and Hollywood. That signifies that performs corresponding to Cock have quick runs, and excessive stress to recoup the substantial preliminary prices concerned in rehearsal and manufacturing. “A TV show can be sold and make millions and millions for ever,” Gracey explains, “whereas a play, especially a short-run play with a star actor, has a very limited window in which to recoup its costs and hopefully make a profit.”

Main producer and theatre proprietor Nica Burns, whose West Finish hits embrace Eachphysique’s Speaking About Jamie and This Home, affords a special tackle the pricing debate. “If people can afford to pay more, they should,” she says, “because it lets us have more tickets at a lower price.” For her, charging excessive ticket costs on large exhibits is only a pure a part of the nice balancing act concerned in producing theatre. “Casting big names means that a producer can make the money that will help them develop something more risky,” she explains on a name from New York, as she takes a breather from catching up on Broadway’s most hyped summer time choices.

And Burns actually practises what she preaches. Final yr, she took an opportunity on bringing Ryan Calais Cameron’s hit play For Black Boys… to the West Finish, adopted by Tyrell Williams’s Pink Pitch this spring. Each had important success after they premiered in small, subsidised off-West Finish theatres (New Diorama and Bush theatre respectively). However would these experimental performs centred on younger, Black expertise pull in West Finish crowds extra used to a food plan of bombastic musicals and star automobiles? “It was unique, a new model for theatre in the West End,” she says, explaining that she intentionally stored costs low to assist these exhibits discover a demographic that doesn’t sometimes enterprise into theatreland.

Her gambit paid off. “It was a completely different audience,” she says cheerfully. “We had a lot of young people coming in on £20 tickets.” And though each exhibits have been designed as a loss chief, they ended up turning a revenue. “To get a bit of cream off the top was a delight. Sometimes, as producers we do things because we feel so strongly about the work, and if we get our money back, we have a little jig, and if we get more than our money back, we have a little drink!”

It’s clear that theatre doesn’t must be worth gouge to be worthwhile. At simply 24, Ameena Hamid is the West Finish’s youngest producer and is captivated with staging work her associates can afford to see. “Theatre hasn’t always felt super accessible to everyone – it’s been seen as elitist – and all this publicity about high ticket prices is just making it worse. There are so many ways to get cheaper tickets, but they’re not really publicised.”

Hamid’s new present Why Am I So Single? is firmly aimed on the sort of youthful audiences who may be priced out by the most recent West Finish star automobile. It’s a brand new musical from Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who co-wrote the hit musical Six whereas they have been learning at Cambridge College. The pair’s bubblegum pop hooks are catnip to the brand new technology of theatre followers that Hamid is focusing on utilizing TikTok and Instagram. “We want to be real with people, to show them that theatre isn’t all hoity-toity and expensive – it can be fun and playful and affordable.” Why Am I So Single? has loads of £20 seats every evening, and a high ticket worth of £110 – not low-cost, however considerably decrease than the typical high ticket worth of £166.98 throughout London’s business theatres. “Theatre has a long way to go, and it’s not doing everything right. But there are some really brilliant initiatives.”

These embrace Broadway transplant Slave Play’s scheme providing 30 “pay what you can” tickets for every efficiency, that means that audiences may see the present for as little as £1. Though the pandemic was the nail within the coffin for the apply of queueing for reasonably priced day seats at West Finish theatres, most exhibits now supply weekly on-line lotteries for cheaper tickets. And seat-filling companies corresponding to The Viewers Membership and Masterclass give members entry to exhibits that aren’t promoting nicely for a nominal payment.

Nonetheless, these schemes are complicated to navigate, and modest in scope. They lack the sweeping, democratic imaginative and prescient of older initiatives corresponding to Nicholas Hytner’s much-missed link-up with Travelex: in 2003, its first season offered two-thirds of tickets within the Nationwide Theatre’s Olivier most important stage for simply £10. Or Michael Grandage’s starry 2013 slate of West Finish exhibits with 100,000 seats throughout the season priced at £10. Such daring, inclusive gestures are particularly wanted proper now, as the price of dwelling rises, youthful persons are hit with a double whammy of upper rents and better scholar debt, and humanities schooling is winnowed from college curriculums.

For example of the place we must be aiming, Hamid factors to Solt and UK Theatre’s joint Theatre for Each Youngster marketing campaign, whose objective is to get all secondary college college students to see not less than one stage present. “Getting started young is so important,” she says. “I first fell in love with theatre at a panto when I saw one of the ugly sisters’ wigs fall off. I got so excited by the idea that the show would be different every time: it’s affected by the audience that’s in the room with you. We need to show young people that theatre is something that can be exciting and diverse and reflective of their everyday lives.”

London’s subsidised sector is doing simply that, with the likes of Bush theatre and the New Diorama producing transferable exhibits that change perceptions of what theatre could be, at reasonably priced costs. However in relation to the West Finish, there’s a hazard that worth inflation may do terminal harm. As Laurine says: “I mostly go to the theatre alone, because my friends can’t afford to join me.”

Costs of present exhibits right at time of publishing