Why Am I So Single? - Garrick

I personally really don’t like this as a precedent.

In the past, previews were a (heavily) cut price experience, where things can and will go wrong. Many first previews were (sometimes still are) the first full dress run. They often ran far too long as the book, scene changes and musical numbers are refined/cut/re-worked, all ready for opening night - the first true performance. This was reflected in the price, the audience’s expectation and goodwill. Nowadays, you’ll be lucky to get £5-£10 off a preview ticket and reviews are online within minutes.

Producers have made this the new normal.

They are now stretching the boundaries even further by charging £20 for a workshop. Previously, shows would be workshopped privately, they’d invite investors, test casting ideas, develop material in its infancy. Contrast and compare The Phantom of the Opera which workshopped at Sydmonton compared to the production which opened in the West End. Compare and contrast Next to Normal, which workshopped privately for years as “Feelin’ Electric”, then opened Off-Broadway, then earned a Broadway run.

Personally this smacks of greed and abuse of fan/audience goodwill, holding let’s say a certain type of fan upside down by the ankles to capture every last penny. How desperately do they need those £20/£15’s? What are they going to learn by having a young audience of screaming teenaged Six fans?

I am sorry but the day I am paying £20 to do their market research for them is the day I give up on commercial theatre.

Given it appears to have sold out, there is an appetite for it.

Thankfully it holds zero interest for me. I never bought into the hype about Six and have no interest in seeing anything further after the mess that was Legally Blonde last summer.

They clearly have a fanbase. A very strong and vocal one. And they have snapped up the tickets for this event.

I don't see how this is different to other shows that develop through various incarnations, i.e. starting at the Edinburgh Fringe, doing some small local production, then a bigger local production and so on, so I don't get the negativity around this.

Nobody is being forced to see this and personally I'd be happy to pay, take a look and give feedback. I'm sure it's already at a stage where they feel confident enough to present it to an audience with a full cast and band, so you do get to see a performance. People pay £20 for much dafter things.

 As all five performances have already sold out I assume this is in a very small theatre space ?

To elucidate my view further, it isn’t so much the (fairly low) cost of tickets, it is rather the precedent of establishing a “new normal”, which will inevitably snowball if accepted as reasonable.

I was saying the same thing with the introduction of premium seats. At the time, the argument in favour was that these would be a select number of the very best seats in the house, simply being marginally more expensive than those a row behind/in front. My counter argument to that was that by establishing a higher price point, other seat prices would naturally be uplifted in relative value. Sadly, this is exactly what has happened.

I was also saying the same when Spamalot launched in the West End as the most expensive pound-for-pound (based on inflation) show in the West End. Within weeks almost every other big musical had increased their prices. These increases were pure profit for shows such as Phantom, Les Mis et al because their overheads hadn’t changed a penny as a result of another more expensive show opening. It simply allowed them to charge more because another show had established the new normal.

I said the same when preview performances lost their value, when very early shows of new productions were up to 50% off the price on opening night, with the expectation and understanding from the audience that things may go wrong. Now it is barely 10% in most cases.

I said the same when Fourth Wall Live and others began producing concert productions for as much as - and sometimes more - the cost of seeing full scale West End shows. Prices have risen and risen and risen to the point of absurdity for these events - which in my own experience have ranged from good to abysmal. But the prices continue to rise.

On Broadway, strong unions continue to protect shows by guaranteeing minimum orchestra sizes, for instance. Despite recent happenings with Here Lies Love, they - and therefore that aspect of a production’s integrity - are still largely protected.

The one thing all of these “evolutions” in the theatregoing experience have in common, is they exclusively benefit the producers and provide less value for the customer. And if commercial theatre is intent on nickel and diming theatregoers that’s what they become, customers.

I am against this practice not as a one-off idea, specific to this particular show and their rabid fan base, but because of what it represents and the door is opens across theatre on a wider basis.

What is £20 for a workshop now, could and arguably likely will be more and more each year. And their own PR makes this very clear it is a workshop.

There has to be a limit to this and this is that one final step too far for me. I am getting absolutely sick of it.

But what EXACTLY is your problem? Since workshops are usually NOT accessible, this is just opening the doors a little bit. It's not like workshops were widely available for free so far. At least this allows fans to be part of the process while so far workshops would only be for insiders or posh folks sipping champagne while nibbling cucumber sandwiches such as the Lord's Sydmonton Festival.

Just to clarify, I don't have an issue with them doing it. But more the 'they're doing it out the goodness of their own hearts' angle.

And there's next to 0% chance that this will have been the very first workshop of the piece. This will already have been workshopped (to death!) and producers/writers/creatives will feel that it's ready to be seen by a wider audience as the next stage in the development process. With the people involved there will be a long term plan for the production and no one involved is going to risk jeopardising that by showing material which they're not confident is ready. I really don't feel that this is any different - as others have mentioned - of doing an Edinburgh or Fringe run to get the show in front of a (slightly) wider audience though definitely less risky financially given the short run/costs of the workshop performances. I almost get a feeling that they've deliberately under selling the show/workshop with a hope that it will totally exceed expectations and get the buzz about a commercial run going.

I agree with this.

At 5 shows of 180 people, that's 900 tickets.

If half that amount were sold to the general public (with the other half being reserved for industry people), that's not a lot of tickets, and I assume they will have alerted their megafans first to the ticket sale to try to get positive rather than negative first impressions out there.

Even then, if they thought there was even a small chance of a horrible reaction, I don't think this would be happening, as once you sell tickets to the general public, they are entitled to say whatever they feel about your show, and broadcast that on social media, even if it's negative.

As posters above have said, this will have been workshopped to death, and the hope is that the fans agree with the creatives that the show is in great shape.

I suppose if the reaction is negative, they could withdraw the toe they dipped in the water, and go back to work on the show, but it's obvious that's not what they expect to happen.

On these terms, I'd happily buy a ticket for £20 (just as if I was at the Edinburgh Fringe) and say exactly what I think, positive or negative lol.

TBH when you consider that comedians often do small gigs to test material, a musical workshop charging people to see it is not that big a deal.

It was in summer 2019 that I found myself in an upstairs room at Hull New Theatre for a workshop production of The Remarkable Tale of Dorothy Mackaill. The writer's sister was one of the cast, with their mother in charge of feedback forms.

Fast forward to autumn 2023 and the full length version finally has its premiere at East Riding Theatre in Beverley, with May Tether from Heathers in the cast!

There is no way all 900 will have been sold. There'll be loads of guests and industry people to get their input, the creative team will watch every show, as well as potential investors.

So £18,000 is unlikely, and even less after paying the venue, rehearsal fees, cast, the band if there is one, so even chumpier change. I think its cool what they're doing.

I remember paying a LOT for the Bad Girls musical workshop (ahem) several (ahem) years ago at Charing Cross. Mind you, the workshop was bad, the end production also wanted locking up.