Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

So it looks like Potter will sell out a year and a half in advance. They need to get more productions open to cope with demand it would seem.

I suggest building a new double auditorium theatre, where Parts 1 & 2 could be performed both nights in different spaces. The casts alternate so that you have the same actors on successive performances of Parts 1 and 2(as much as possible anyway). People wouldn't be able to turn up at the wrong building, but separate front of house areas would be best to avoid spoilers.

I don't know why Nimax is claiming it's sold out - having been in the queue yesterday, I can see quite a few tickets available this morning. You wouldn't be in much luck if you were shopping for a family, but individuals would have quite a lot of choice from what I can see, so lord knows why they've blocked off the booking site with claims of having sold out.

Your suggestion effectively runs two additional productions of both parts. Why not schedule each acting company's Parts One and Two in the same theatre, on a similar schedule to that at the Palace? It's one play in two parts and it would spoil the atmosphere to have to decamp to a different auditorium at the midway point. The Palace system of the same seat for both parts is ideal.

Thinking more about the bookings thing, really, it's just giving all those born after around 1990 a taste of how it used to be in the West End.

Remember when you waited a year or more for "Cats," "Miz," "Phantom" and "Saigon?" The only difference was that they took longer to sell out because there were only a few phone lines and staff to process postal* bookings. Given the pace of life at the time, though, they still sold out very fast for years ahead, and you were lucky to get anything at all. Most people didn't.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.


*Postal Booking: You took a piece of paper, wrote with a pen your name and address at the top, and asked the box office to send you some tickets from one of a list of dates you had written. You added a cheque (another bit of paper that says your bank will pay the person named on it) left "open" to a maximum amount, added another envelope and stamp (bit of paper you stick on an envelope to pay the postal service - people who carry your letter to the theatre) with your name and address so they could send tickets back to you. And then you put it in the pillar-box (red tube shaped thing in the street, postal service collects letters from it) and waited.

For 2017?