The New York Times: The hottest celebrity on the London stage is a four-foot-tall bear with a fondness for marmalade. Tickets to “Paddington: The Musical” are hard to come by — the show is consistently sold out — and costly, by British standards: The best seats, when bought directly from the show itself, are 250 pounds, which is about $330.
My main take away from this article is that $1,500 is way too much to be paying for a ticket to a show, that's insane, where are these people finding this money. It’s unfortunate that shows are becoming this expensive, making theater, an already somewhat inaccessible art form, even harder for the average person to afford. But on the other hand, if people are willing to pay that much to go see a show, you don't have to be a business major to understand why the prices keep going up. The other thing that was interesting in this article was that shows in London are cheaper in part because people aren't worried about where they are going to get health care from, which is such an interesting factor that I had never really considered for part of show cost, but it does make sense that something like that could push up the cost of shows considerably.
ReplyDeleteI am quite confused as to why shows in London and on the West End would be less expensive than the ones in New York. In a way, are they saying that the performance in London on the West End is less quality than the ones that are performing on Broadway and in New York? I just think that it is weird that the prices are so different from London to New York, and they're able to keep their tickets this low because the cost to produce the show is less than in the United States. I would like to see a total in-depth production budget for a West End show, as this article shows us the big picture cost of these tickets, and I would love to see a side-by-side of the budgets for a Broadway show versus a West End show. And I would love to see if there is a pinpoint for a major difference in the cost of everything, or if it is just a little bits and pieces that are being saved up for an end goal of being less expensive.
ReplyDeleteI’m lucky enough to have seen shows both on Broadway and on the West End. My friend and I had better seats in London, and they were way, way cheaper. Another thing I noticed was that British audiences tended to dress up for occasions far more than American audiences despite the price differences. This article also neglects to mention another reason why West End tickets are cheaper–subsidies from the government that actually fund the arts in London. Also, the actors and technicians are vastly underpaid. It’s honestly a mess of money all around. The pricing on Broadway is incomprehensibly messy, though. Last-minute rush tickets with standing room can be $100 depending on the show, which is more than the average West End ticket price. Price is absolutely a prohibitive cost for anyone interested in commercial theatre–it is for me, and it will remain to be as long as buying tickets stays a mad grab for anything under $100.
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