Cheapest seats and best views?

I would definitely suggest joining the Audience Club (although there is normally a short waiting list). Its discussed here-

theatreboard.co.uk/post/52511/thread

You normally get 2 tickets, but there is an option to 'upgrade' to get 4 tickets for some productions I believe.

For the Old Vic, the cheapest seats I'd recommend are on the Lilian Baylis level, at the side, row X, helpfully coloured green here by TheatreMonkey (www.theatremonkey.com/OLDVICstalls.htm). You're sitting on a bench and you have to lean forward to see properly, but as you're nearer the back, you're not blocking anyone when you do so can lean as far as you like. (Never tried row P, also coloured green by TM, always been able to buy row X.) And of course there's the PWC £10 previews, but if you need to plan in advance it might not be such a helpful scheme.

The Young Vic always has tickets at £10 in the main house (not so much in their studio spaces) and although the configuration varies, I've always been very satisfied with my £10 seats there.

The Almeida does restricted view seats for £10. The ones in the central block are RV because they're behind pillars but the pillars are very thin. Row F and row L in particular have some that are hardly restricted at all. (The ones to the sides are sometimes behind pillars but sometimes just too far round to the sides to see the whole stage, so go central where you can.)

The NT's usual cheap price is £15 (for Travelex, or front stalls Olivier and Lyttelton, although those stalls seats rise to £18 on Friday and Saturday evenings), but they also do a young people's scheme called EntryPass which I believe is the same age range and price as the RSC's scheme (but I was too old for it when they introduced it so I can't speak with confidence). (Actually, I think the Almeida has a young people's scheme too, but the RV seats are cheaper.)

There's Barclay Front Row seats for £10 at the Donmar, but they can be hard to get for more popular shows and again you don't have a lot of time for forward planning as they go on sale two weeks in advance.

Downstairs at the Royal Court has the circle side slips for £12 which are much the same story as the Old Vic - get the ones nearer the back and you can lean with impunity, but bear in mind it's a pretty side-on view. Failing that, they've got some at the back of the balcony. If you go back row in the balcony, there's no one behind you and a railing in front of you so you're very free to lean, but there's very little legroom and the £12 seats are round to the sides which can sometimes affect your view. And they do £10 Mondays in both auditoria but again you really can't plan for that as you need to be on the website at 9am ready to buy tickets for that evening.

There are £10 standing spaces in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse but as they're in the upper gallery, I cannot recommend them AT ALL. Never go higher than lower gallery in the Wanamaker if you can help it, otherwise it's all candles all the time. But if it's more of a concert or a poetry reading you're interested in or if there's some really unmissable casting then it at least gets you through the door to listen even if you can't see much.

The Arcola Theatre Passport scheme still works out at £10 a ticket, iirc. The Southwark Playhouse PAYG scheme has now increased in cost but I think it balances out at £12 a ticket which will still technically get you 4 tickets for under £50 even if you have to make an initial outlay of £60 to get it. Both theatres have two spaces and a wide variety of stuff so well worth a look, see if you reckon you could make full use of their schemes. (EDIT: you can only buy two tickets at a time with the Southwark Playhouse scheme apparently, but it doesn't say you can't have two accounts based in the same house. The Arcola Passport will probably have similar restrictions so you'll probably have to read up on them before going all in.)

And, of course, there's fringe venues. Some of them aren't priced very differently to more expensive theatres, but there's some really thought-provoking stuff happening in the smaller venues for under a tenner if you hunt around.

Hampstead do some £10 tickets for under 30s, you would probably need to be on their mailing list to know when they go on sale. All the views there are pretty good, I think.

Edited to add: the other thing to do, of course, is watch this board closely, there are always excellent tips to be had eg. £15 Row C tix for Imelda and £10 front row seats for Lazarus, as well as brilliant advice from Theatremonkey about seat views.

Oh, or go to Hampstead Downstairs! £5 a ticket for a preview, £12 a ticket for the main run! There can be some proper dross down there, but the good stuff has always vastly outweighed it for me.

Also, I've had some quite good seats for a tenner through LastMinute.com. Front row of Dead Funny in November, for instance. You can filter it to show only the cheapest priced tickets but the shows available do wildly fluctuate.

You can get into the Royal Opera House for as little as £9 a head, I believe. Front row of the upper slips is somewhere to aim for, though obviously they can sell out awfully quickly.

If your happy to stand, do it. I was at the Wyndhams today standing at the back of the balcony. Clear view and didn't feel far from the stage. I didn't notice the burden of standing, and for £10 to see No Man's Land, or any other high quality production with expensive tickets it could be a solution.

Coincidentally, having just passed the bicycle shop which is giving an astonishing discount on new bikes on production of a student card, and in need of a new bike, the disreputable side of my brain was already at work wondering how I could get my hands on a student card without actually being, er, a student. In these days where everything has a price, I'm sure there's an economy somewhere to provide for my needs.