West End ticket prices

I find this honesty refreshing. Any organisation has to balance competing aims - that’s just the reality of life - and making people sufficiently aware of what those aims are and how they are trying to balance them helps to manage expectations.

Of course some people will be put out, but understanding why something is changing helps people accept it, in my experience - though it won’t stop the grumbling.

It’s pretty ballsy that they’re telling regulars to stop being cheap stakes.

I can’t tell you the number of people I know who have never been to the theatre (or not been in over a decade) and use the excuse of the ticket prices, but then ignore me when I find great deals for them
for under £20. The ticket price excuse is not always the most honest answer from some.

I sometimes do it when people ask why I go to plays and musicals but not opera or ballet. Ticket prices are a small factor for why I’ve never been to the ballet, but if someone offered me a cheap ticket tomorrow I’d probably still turn it down.

Thanks @theatremonkey, though if it's ENO I'd probably say no too, given how ghastly most of their recent productions look to be!

Thinking about it, if the ROH wants to stop people going so regularly then why don't they impose a limit on the number of cheap seats someone can buy? Opera Holland Park does that with their cheap seats: there's a limit of 4 per season/2 per production for each person. I don't recall any public complaints about that. Putting prices up seems as likely to deter new audiences as repeat viewers.

I'm putting this here, because I don't know where else to put it and don't know if it's worth starting a new thread for. I've been pretty upset by the closing notice of Bat this week and I've noticed the discrepancy there between very well sold weekend performances and badly sold weekday performances. Something I've seen at other shows, too, when poking around the booking sites.

So this morning I suddenly wondered if the whole "playing all week" system might just not work anymore. It stems from a time when people had very little entertainment at home, so had to go out for movies, theatre, music, etc. Today most people have massive entertainment opportunities at home - movies and streaming services on big screens, the internet, computer games and so on.

At the same time work life has become more and more demanding, longer hours, more stress, long commutes, etc. and I guess many just don't feel up for a night at the theatre after a long work day, with the commute still ahead in the late evening, getting up early again next morning, especially when they know they can kick back with some good TV or a game at home instead. I've found that when I catch a mid-week show here at home, I can't fully enjoy it the way I can a weekend performance, because I often have work-related stuff on my mind. I also don't want to get home too late, because I need to be up early next morning. I still do mid-week here, because prices are lower for mid-week performances than for weekends and there's a conveniently early 6.30pm performance once a week. If it cost the same and started the same time (like in London) I know I'd book Fridays or Saturdays instead though.

Long-runners like Wicked, Les Mis, Phantom, etc. probably profit more from tourists that are in London mid-week, while new musicals and plays need to rely more on a local audience and it makes sense to me, that these people would prefer a Friday or Saturday for a nice evening out. I don't know if there's a solution though, I know all the arguments against Sunday performances and I don't know if it's feasible to just cut at least Monday and Tuesday completely or maybe lower prices mid-week/do earlier start times to attract the post-work crowd. Or if I'm totally wrong about this anyway.

Most shows do lower prices during the week as standard, and have a much higher percentage of premium seats at the weekends in general.

I'd be 100% up for more 7pm starts during the week. I also dislike when a shorter show starts later (7:45/8pm).

Oh definitely. A lot of Sunday shows I've specifically booked for that day because of nothing else being on. Most recently a Eugenius and Six double show day (we had about an hour to blitz from Victoria up to the Arts). And I also saw bank robbery the other week because I'd been saving it for a Sunday where I had nothing else to do.

From a selfish perspective, 7:00 starts on a Monday would be perfect.

Monday’s usually have a more appreciative audience and the earlier start ensuries I get home at a reasonable hour.

7pm starts should be adopted as standard at the Old Vic and the Almeida, two theatres that are vaguely notorious for surprising audiences with extremely long running times. I'll never forget the horror radiating off social media when the early previews of The Crucible went on for four hours, nor the relief when Robert Icke productions started being given the earlier curtain time. Give us 7pm start times, then we won't mind so much when Sylvia turns out to be longer than 3 hours, and we'll be DELIGHTED to get home earlier if it turns out you've scheduled a 90 minute play somehow.

I guess it must work out better for everyone making the show to have the later start. Us civilians normally just end up with more time to kill between finishing work and the start of the show, so it's not usually better for us.

7pm starts would mean I could only go on a day off as no chance of getting to a theatre in time from work that early! I do agree that a really long show should start then but in general no thanks. Sundays instead of a weeknight also get thumbs down from me as I work Sundays so it would just be another performance I couldn't manage.