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When hundreds of theatergoers lined up outside London’s Wyndham’s Theater this week, the atmosphere was exciting. They had come to see Kenneth Branagh, the revered Shakespearean actor, directing and playing the title role in “King Lear.”
But some were still thinking about the price they had paid to be there.
Alan Hooper, 75, a retired teacher, said that at the ticket office that morning he was offered a seat in the first balcony for 200 pounds, about $240, or a standing seat for a fraction of the cost. He chose to remain steadfast throughout the show’s two-hour run. West End prices, Hooper said, were “out of control.”
Another audience member, George Butler, 28, said he was delighted to have gotten two tickets for 20 pounds, or about $24, each, even if they were in the nosebleeds. “Theater is becoming very elitist,” Butler said. “The moment a well-known person appears in a work, he is unavailable.”
London’s theater world is increasingly abuzz with complaints about rising ticket prices and the perception that they are getting closer to Broadway levels. Even as producers insist that a fraction of tickets must be sold at high prices to compensate for cheap seats for low-income people, concerns are growing that a night at the theater is becoming an unaffordable luxury.
The West End stars themselves are fueling the scandal. In April, Derek Jacobi, the veteran actor, he told The Guardian newspaper that potential theatergoers now had to think “more than twice” before attending shows. A few months later, David Tennant sparked a debate when he said in a Radio Times podcast that rising prices were “strangling the next generation of audiences.”
This fall, theater message boards and Social media erupted in outrage. when tickets for a production of “Plaza Suite,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, went on sale at a top price of £395, about $477, a level rarely heard of in London.
However, it was unclear whether these few high-profile cases reflected a broader problem. Alistair Smith, editor of The Stage, a British theater newspaper, said it was difficult to analyze whether ticket prices were rising across the board, because producers publish very little sales data.
To fill the void, your newspaper surveys annually the cheapest and most expensive tickets in the entire West End. This year’s results, Smith said, showed that the average ticket price in the most expensive price group was £141, or about $170 (a decade ago, the figure was much lower (£81). This year’s average was still “far, far behind Broadway,” she said, adding that the cost of the most expensive tickets had barely changed from 2022, despite soaring domestic costs.
However, Smith added, the average price of the cheapest tickets had risen more than inflation to £25, or $30. “It would be worrying if that trend continues,” he said.
For many West End producers, the perception of rising prices is a source of growing frustration. Patrick Gracey, a producer who sits on the board of the London Theater Society, said the media publishes articles about high ticket prices because “they get clicks.” Those stories “misled the public about the availability of affordable tickets,” he said.
Last year, Gracey said, theatergoers paid an average of £54, or about $66, to see a West End show. (The average price on Broadway last week was double that, at $125, according to data from The Broadway League.)
Producers were facing increasing costs, Gracey added. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, some theaters saw their energy costs rise by as much as 500 percent, and there were similar jumps in the prices of construction materials. Last year, West End actors and crew They got a salary agreement that caused their salaries to increasealso.
Even with those pressures, Gracey said producers were working to keep the theater accessible and offering cheap tickets for those who couldn’t splurge. “It’s only possible to offer those tickets because some people pay the highest price,” she said.
The producers of “King Lear” said in an emailed statement that they were offering 150 tickets per performance at £20, equivalent to 19 percent of the venue’s total. Among them, 17 were in the front row and the rest in the back rows of the three levels of the theater.
The problem was audience perception, said Nick Hytner, co-founder of the Bridge Theatre. Producers needed to develop “a compelling counter-narrative” that theater was affordable or else young people would decide the art form was not for them. Discounting the worst seats in the back of crowded Victorian theaters was not enough, he said, adding that theaters need to develop more innovative approaches to pricing.
One West End show that is trying something new is “Operation Mincemeat,” a musical set in World War II. At each performance, all seats in the venue cost the same price, but that amount gradually increases throughout the week, from £39.50 on Mondays to £89.50 at weekends. Jon Thoday, CEO of Avalon, the show’s producer, said the production was losing money on Mondays, but added that the pricing strategy was good for the long-term future of the musical because it attracted a younger audience.
“There will always be an uproar over ticket prices unless others change,” Thoday said.
At “King Lear” earlier this week, theatergoers didn’t complain, at least not about Branagh’s show. Marshall Shaffer, 31, a film journalist visiting from New York, said he had paid $403 for two tickets. “I didn’t necessarily think it was a bargain,” he said, “but Branagh is probably the leading Shakespearean performer of his time, and I think it’s worth it.”
Another audience member, Penny Smith, joked that she had to “sell a kid” to buy her ticket, but said she was happy to pay to see Branagh. Plus, she said, laughing, the tickets were “a lot cheaper than New York. Have you seen the prices there?