Operation Mincemeat - New Diorama/SWP/Riverside/Fortune

97 times! Good grief!!

Very defensive interview about ticket prices in the Stage.

www.thestage.co.uk/features/operation-mincemeat-producer-jon-thoday-were-trying-to-keep-the-show-as-accessible-as-we-can

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What is the logic behind having an £89.50 flat ticket price?

We’ve been backing the show since we saw it at the New Diorama and the journey from there to here is one that very few shows manage to make. When we were trying to get the show into the West End we were only offered one theatre and that theatre was the Fortune. And we love the Fortune. But the problem with the Fortune is it only has 427 seats in total and 12 standing tickets. And although there are five people on stage, there are 33 people in the company making those five people operate. So basically, we didn’t have a choice as to which theatre to go to.

So, you have expensive tickets because in an ideal world you would have gone into a larger theatre?

Yes. If we could have gone to a small theatre, but bigger than the Fortune, that would have been our first choice, and it would also have been easier economically.

The average price is £74.50, which isn’t high for the West End, but why are the less good seats the same price as the good seats? You could have the same average but price them in bands like other shows.

The logic is that we are not fans of shows where it’s like ‘tickets from £15’ or ‘tickets from £10’ but when it actually comes down to it there’s about four tickets [at that price], even in a 1,000 seater.

Regardless, if you had the nice stalls seats at £120 and the upper circle at £50 it would feel more accessible, wouldn’t it?

We are not fans of not being able to make a decent number of really good seats available to people who can’t afford it. And our way of doing it – which is different – is to do that on Mondays and Tuesdays. And the downside of that is, we have to somehow make that up elsewhere in the week. It’s not ideal, but that is our way around it.

What is the logic behind having an £89.50 flat ticket price?

We’ve been backing the show since we saw it at the New Diorama and the journey from there to here is one that very few shows manage to make. When we were trying to get the show into the West End we were only offered one theatre and that theatre was the Fortune. And we love the Fortune. But the problem with the Fortune is it only has 427 seats in total and 12 standing tickets. And although there are five people on stage, there are 33 people in the company making those five people operate. So basically, we didn’t have a choice as to which theatre to go to.

So, you have expensive tickets because in an ideal world you would have gone into a larger theatre?

Yes. If we could have gone to a small theatre, but bigger than the Fortune, that would have been our first choice, and it would also have been easier economically.

The average price is £74.50, which isn’t high for the West End, but why are the less good seats the same price as the good seats? You could have the same average but price them in bands like other shows.

The logic is that we are not fans of shows where it’s like ‘tickets from £15’ or ‘tickets from £10’ but when it actually comes down to it there’s about four tickets [at that price], even in a 1,000 seater.

Regardless, if you had the nice stalls seats at £120 and the upper circle at £50 it would feel more accessible, wouldn’t it?

We are not fans of not being able to make a decent number of really good seats available to people who can’t afford it. And our way of doing it – which is different – is to do that on Mondays and Tuesdays. And the downside of that is, we have to somehow make that up elsewhere in the week. It’s not ideal, but that is our way around it.

Looking at sales tonight [Friday, June 14], the show is sold out on the first two levels and there’s lots of availability on the upper circle – wouldn’t you make more money if those seats were cheaper?

Well, firstly, we’ve been playing at 95% [capacity] since the beginning. We don’t change the prices according to where we are in the cycle of the year. It’s pretty hard to sell the last few seats, not least because some of them are standing. And also we actually like people to be able to buy seats on the day, so that’s a separate thing. Our top price is £89.50 and most musicals have top prices of north of £100. We would love to have another 150 seats and do what you’re talking about. But we don’t. And we prefer the fact people can actually pay £39.50 on Mondays and get a seat in the stalls. So we’ve deliberately taken a position in a theatre that, to be frank, hasn’t got quite enough seats for us.

I think what’s causing bad feeling about it is that while it is laudable that there are no £125 seats, somebody on a low budget could only see it on a Saturday if they won the £25 lottery, drawn every two weeks, which means less well off people can’t plan to see it…

You sound a bit annoyed about it, but basically what I’m finding is that people like the things that we’re doing that are positive, right? Like holding a lottery at £25. Like keeping Mondays at £39.50. I have people calling me going: ‘Why don’t you put your Mondays up?’ I have deliberately wanted to keep that to keep it accessible.

I’m more interested than annoyed. But in 15 years, I have never seen a West End price structure like this one.

You’re right. There are ups and downs.

Say you get a £15 seat to Les Misérables, you’re probably sat behind a pillar or something, but there is a reliable entry point if you’re on a budget and want to book in advance for a Saturday night.

Well, if you want to see it on a Saturday night I agree with you, but I go back to the fact that we’ve only got 427 seats in total and we do our lottery. So even though we could often sell Saturday nights completely at the full price, right to the back of the upper circle, we deliberately include lottery seats on a Saturday. And they’re not just in the upper circle. If we were managing it for optics, we would have the back two rows of the upper circle, like you say, available for £20 or whatever it is, and no one would complain, right?

Probably not! You’re booking at the Fortune for quite a long time, but if you did move to a larger house, do you think you’d look at a more conventional pricing structure?

At one point we hoped that we would go to the Trafalgar. But even if we’d gone there, what we wouldn’t have done is done that thing where you go and sit in the stalls and one seat is priced at X, and the other one next to it is priced at Y. I think that’s bollocks.

I wanted to ask about the expansion of the ballot. Recently, Monday tickets were balloted, but now you have to enter a ballot to buy advance seats for five out of the week’s eight shows when there’s a new sales period: again, that is highly unusual, what’s the thinking?

Well, we wanted to make sure that everyone had a chance on Monday seats, which were white hot and still are white hot. But we have a group rate every day, which most shows certainly don’t do. If you bring 30 people on a Monday, you pay £19.50 a ticket. If you bring 30 people on a Saturday, you pay £69.50. Our problem is that there are people online who bundle those seats, and then they sell them for what appears to be a discount, but it’s actually a markup. So we did it to avoid that.

Okay, that’s not an angle I’d thought of.

I knew we were having the chat, and I found a [secondary] ticket online on sale for this weekend for £5,600 in the stalls. I mean, the same site also had them for £200.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

We actually are trying to run the show as accessible as we can make it. We’re not using £200 tickets and we’re doing the best we can. It’s really hard to keep everybody happy.

That interview has annoyed me. It’s completely tone deaf and arrogant.

Surely they’d have a much better chance of moving theatres now? I know it’s probably availability stopping it, but surely someone would want to snap up the multi Olivier winning, “best reviewed show in west end history”?

I would have liked the interviewer to push more on the top circle seats and how restrictive they are, because their only justification is it’s fair to keep all prices the same. When I go to the theatre I NEVER ask the person next to me how much they paid. Mostly because I would definitely be the one who paid a lot less, but also because I’m not a dick and don’t want someone to feel bad. So why are they worried about person x and person y?

Its Jon Thoday  managing director of Avalon

They really don't have any concept of the actual problem here. Also 'well we wanted a bigger theatre' is such nonsense - that show would drown in a bigger theatre. It suffered a little even going from off-west end/fringe venues into the Fortune. This is just Avalon getting on the defensive. They're pretty new to producing theatre and they want to establish themselves as legitimate by doing something different, except the thing they chose to do was stupid and now they're frantically trying to justify the unjustifiable and find ways to fix their mistake without just admitting they were wrong and adopting a normal and sensible pricing strategy. And those 'fixes' are also making things worse.

The whole discourse about the pricing policy at the Fortune theatre caught my attention (I blame Theatre Twitter!) and I want to thank Oobi for posting the interview from The Stage. 

First of all, anyone who speaks on behalf of a production or any kind of institution and starts a reply with the words "You sound a bit annoyed about it, but [...]" raises a bit of a red flag... and could do with some PR training.  

Secondly, it's clear they've done some maths and they probably have an Excel spreadsheet somewhere that shows that this policy allows them to make a bit more money than they would otherwise.  However... the arguments they put forward to defend their choices are weak and sound a bit like those of politicians deflecting when they're asked an uncomfortable question.  

In January 2023 I was in NYC and went to see the production of 'Merrily we roll along' that has subsequently become a Broadway hit and won Tony Awards, etc.  It was on at the New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW), a venue that holds 198 seats, which at the time of booking were all priced equally at 149$.  Whilst not 'cheap' in absolute terms, 149$ is (sadly!) almost cheap in the NYC theatre context, and I suspect that for the Hudson Theater run the same 149$ would have maybe got me a seat towards the very back of the stalls if I had booked very early... I have checked and they wouldn't get me in at all now that they're nearly sold out for the remaining performances.    

The NYTW production ran for two months only, and had Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe leading a fairly large cast.  For them to charge 149$ a seat - anywhere in a rather intimate space (I seem to recall it only goes as far back as row K) with great sightlines all around because there is only one level (think of it as a Donmar-like space but with no circle) - felt ok to me.  

On the other hand, charging £89.50 (about 114$) for a seat at the far back of the Upper Circle to see a performance in an open-ended run of a show with no names in the cast to me feels... well, just greedy.  No matter how hard they try to spin it as a way to compensate for the Monday performances.   


   

I don't think it's really about the fandom?? It's about any potential audience, and the show itself. Decently priced tickets are now all but impossible to get, limiting access for anyone who can't pay £90 or need to make plans in advance to travel so can't rely on the lottery. And it's giving the show a terrible reputation, which is such a shame for the cast and the writers. I struggle to imagine this being what they would want. For a show that prides itself on starting from the bottom and working their way up to the West End based on the sheer excellent of the material and performances, it's awful to see it become so inaccessible to all but those with plenty of disposable income to spare.

I don't believe this is the best way, economically, to run a show, or they wouldn't be the first to try it. It's all just a bit of a mess at this point, with every new development more baffling than the last. If you're being interviewed about how bad your ticketing system is, there is clearly a problem.

And it's hardly the only time we've seen Avalon refuse to back down after a poor decision. That US survey was a terrible idea and cannot have endeared them to any potential US investors, and yet they still did a follow up email promoting it as a success...

That’s kinda my point though. All this furore is in the echo chamber of the fandom and the theatre world. Joe Public (and the market they are now targeting) doesn’t have a clue. I do think it’s all part of the painful transition to mass market.

They must have a clue though, when they try to book a ticket and find nothing for less than £90 Wednesday onwards (as is the case for the latest batch of tickets released). That's going to price a lot of people out. And sure they can go and see pretty much any other show on the west end, because they're all far more sensibly priced, but it's going to mean the people who can afford to see Mincemeat are the very people who the show suggests perhaps it should not all be about. 

Honestly the fans haven't suffered that much. They all share lottery codes amongst each other and can go pretty much as much as they like for £25 a ticket. It's the general public who are being priced out and confused by the ridiculous new ballots. Which is a real shame.

Operation Golden Goose.