Donmar All New Seasons

Seats "from £10" - I read that as an allocation of seats at all prices. So any £10 seats would be back of the circle

Agree with Lynette, Parsley and Constance on both schemes. Particularly Lynette's point about reserving so many of the best seats for the scheme.
Even though I've used front row a lot . If I was Barclays I would have raised an eyebrow seeing the "new audience" my sponsorship had brought in

Yes, but "from" indicates every price

I always used my nimble fingers to get front row seats for everything and then started calling them "Lynette's seats" to myself and peering behind me to catch a glimpse of the real Lynette!!!! I am sad it is ending but it was too good to be true.....it did mean I saw practically everything at the Donmar but probably won't be able to afford to now....hey ho. 

Cheap is one thing, free quite another. There's a huge amount of market research and anecdotal evidence showing that if people pay something, even if it's a tiny nominal sum, they will consider themselves to have made a commitment. Free tickets are not considered a commitment. Often people see that magical word "FREE" and jump to sign up without considering if they are available that evening or even if they want to go, then if they find they're not available or are feeling a bit tired or just don't fancy it, they just don't bother to go. Look at freebies given out in shops or events, people always take handfuls of things they don't want or need and sometimes these things end up in the bins only a few feet away from where the person picked them up. Because FREE!!

I have no issue with Entry Pass's £5 tickets scheme, but free is problematic. A sellout show really shouldn't have 20-odd ticket holders just not showing up. Maybe the Donmar should take credit card details and charge no-shows?

I think we all knew that the Front Row scheme was not doing the job it set out to do - getting new people in to see shows after they'd read a good review of it, to change the 'but it's impossible to get a ticket!' reputation the Donmar had. Instead, us canny experienced theatre goers were simply waiting at 10am on a Monday to snap them up. And many people were still convinced that it's impossible to get a ticket - it takes a long time for a reputation like that to die, especially when the people who believe it have given up actually trying.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. Like many, it means I'll see fewer Donmar productions. I'll miss the luxury of sitting in the central stalls, that's for sure! Back to the side circle for me....

I also agree with 'free' tickets being problematic. I've noticed that they've had them available on the day at the theatre, too - presumably to reduce the number of people booking 2 weeks in advance then not turning up. Though I was chatting to a young student just the other day who is doing a theatre director's course and somehow didn't know about it (or Entry Pass) and it did make me wonder how useless university theatre departments are if they're not spreading this info around to their students!

I cannot justify £75, even with such a season and I have no shame in admitting one of the reasons I have a blog and write for other sites is for the free tickets! I still pay but I agree the free/cheap ticket scheme is open to abuse and no shows but I am one of the examples of people who got into theatre through these schemes and stuck with it.

It was Chichester which did it at the wrong time.

It was predictable that experienced (but relatively poor) theatregoers would use the £10 scheme and snap up the tickets. It's original premise was laudable, but I can't think of any workable scheme that wouldn't have unintended consequences. I also wondered how long the Donmar would take to work out what was happening and discontinue the scheme as it stands.

I agree with what's been said about free tickets: I'm sure there are similar attitudes to tickets from papering sites.

I'm keen to see Arturo Ui having recently read a book on Brecht's plays, but the other offerings are a big fat yawn to me. The Donmar seems to be losing it, imho.

There is a line between being provocative and being a d*ck and you passed it.


I'm a drama student and I go to theatre once or twice a week, but I wouldn't be able to do it if it weren't for things like Entry Pass, Donmar's front row, YOUNG+FREE, front row lotteries or the other student discounts offered by the Royal Court, Almeida etc. Besides, buying cheap tickets is not always a choice but a necessity, have you ever considered it?

I didn't get Front Row tickets for the Donmar that often (The Same Deep Water As Me and Splendour are the only ones I can remember actually managing to get £10 tickets for), so I'm not that disappointed that they're going to be stopping them.

As other people here have said, most of them were going to season theatre-goers rather than people that have never been before, I think it would have been a better idea to filter out people who have bought the £10 tickets before rather than stopping them altogether. Probably best to only send tickets out by post to postal addresses that had not been registered before rather than going by email addresses, yes there would still be abuse of the system but it seems a little bit harsh to stop this altogether (although I'm guessing the sponsorship deal has probably come to an end too).

I only usually go to the Donmar once or twice a year, but I have to say, I have no interest in any of that stuff for the new season. It all sounds extremely dull and worthy.

I'm not sure if it's possible to square this particular circle - you can't get people who are not currently very interested in theatre enthused about it (barring star casting) unless they get a chance to see some really good theatre. But in order to get cheap tickets to really good theatre, you need to already be enthusiastic and motivated enough to find out about the cheap access schemes and jump through some hoops. So it's the people who are already enthusiastic and motivated who snap up the cheap tickets.

It's not just about the price of tickets - though clearly that *is* a barrier for those on low incomes. People also have to be willing and able to track down the information, organise themselves and their friends to book the tickets (they're unlikely to want to go on their own, if they're new theatregoers), travel into London, possibly even stay overnight. 

They were certainly times as a teenager when I gave up on seeing something I wanted to see because I couldn't find anyone to go with me. Which seems incredibly stupid when I look back on it! 

The public booking date is clearly stated on each show webpage on the Donmar site.