Cost of West Stop theatre tickets can be ludicrous, says David Tennant | Theatre
The cost of West Close theatre tickets can be ludicrous and hazards strangling the following technology of theatregoers, David Tennant has claimed.
Some displays, these kinds of as Cabaret and A Streetcar Named Need, charge as considerably as £300 for a seat. Best ticket prices increased by 20% amongst 2019 and 2022, in accordance to the Phase site, as theatre sought to recoup losses incurred all through the pandemic. Leading rates have considering the fact that stabilised. The normal cost for the most high-priced tickets for West Close productions in 2023 was £141.37.
The cheapest seats, which generally have a limited check out, amplified by nearly 13% this calendar year compared with past. Most venues have discounted tickets for young men and women.
Lots of tickets are bought by touts who give them for resale on unofficial web pages at vastly inflated rates. When Tennant performed Hamlet in 2008, tickets were being available by touts for extra than £1,100 a pair.
Tennant, 52, who has starred as the Physician in Physician Who and has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Enterprise, reported theatre seats had been past the reach of younger audiences.
“Live theatre is pricey and it is more and more highly-priced to operate and therefore the ticket costs are ever more highly-priced, and that’s a tricky issue to rationalise,” Tennant told the Radio Occasions podcast.
“Because certainly I would like to visualize that is one thing that anyone must be authorized to take pleasure in, and yet when I’m in a present in the West End I’m mindful that there are tickets offering for ludicrous quantities of funds.
“But they get sold, at which issue you think: ‘Well, what is the theatre management intended to do?’ If it’s a business enterprise, really should they be predicted to give tickets absent?
“The danger is you’re strangling the up coming technology of an audience coming via.”
Tennant said the worth to the British financial system of the arts was acknowledged all through the pandemic when the governing administration made available a rescue bundle to theatres and other cultural venues.
“I believe that was quite telling there was an acknowledgment and comprehension that when force arrives to shove, we just cannot permit people industries die for the reason that they are essential creatively and artistically, but also they are just a economic engine,” he stated.
“The innovative arts are one particular of our major exports, a person of the factors we do make money from as a state.