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Unchecked Ticket Hikes Are Pricing People Out Of Theatregoing

Glow sticks. We’ll come on to that in a moment.

This week, The iPaper’s Kasia Delgado issued an indictment of A Streetcar Named Desire’s £305 ticket prices, stating: “Theatre needs to make money. It also needs to remain valued and loved, and if only people with loads of spare cash, or a very relaxed approach to credit card debt, end up being able to see it, I worry about where that’ll leave the best form of entertainment that exists. An art form, that – after all – Shakespeare famously put on stage for anyone and everyone.”

Inflation busting premium ticket prices of £305, plus booking fee, is not only absurd, it is criminal amid the cost of living crisis.

To the West End, currently a topsy turvy combination of premium pricing, day seats and even a ‘game of chance’ involving glow sticks.
Rip off

Heck, even leading lady Patsy Ferran is uncomfortable with it all, stating in an interview recently: “The last couple of years theatre prices have reached a point that is shocking to me, but maybe I should just get used to it.”

In reality, profit thirsty ATG’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve.

Of course, our old friend dynamic pricing is at play. I get it. Streetcar is a commercial show entitled to charge whatever the market can take.

But affordability equals sustainability, and sensible ticket prices are key to the theatre’s survival.

Speaking on a panel entitled Building a Better Financial Model for Theatre at The Stage’s Future of Theatre conference, Lighting designer Paule Constable said that premium tickets have generated a “wave of discontent” within the industry.

She added: “We need more transparency around how that money is spent. We, as a workforce, need to make the effort to understand that more and it needs to be talked about more.”

It’s hard not to admit that she has a point. Theatre has got to be kept accessible to everybody, because ultimately everything depends on keeping audiences excited about going.

Still, you can see A Streetcar Named Desire for a tenner. If you queue up 2.5 hours before performances for a glowstick (yes, really). Out of the 30, five glow sticks glow green when snapped. The lucky five can head to the box office and buy a pair of front row £10 tickets. There is a weekly lottery.

Send in the clowns. Ah, don’t bother. They’re here.

Phoenix Theatre Glowstick Day Seat Queue

Anyway, once I’d peeled myself off the ceiling, I went along to embrace the madness this week. Reader, my glow stick did not glow. But I was offered a £35 seat in the dress circle or a £10 standing ticket. I opted for the £10 standing ticket. Later my phone rang and I was put in a house seat. Lucky, eh.

A representative for A Streetcar Named Desire said that 83% of all its tickets have been sold at £100 or under. Hm.

Still, the average face value of top-price tickets in the West End has rocketed by a fifth since 2019, a recent survey by The Stage revealed. Glancing at a handful of West End shows £1-300 stalls seats are sadly standard now.

Of course, this fluctuates year on year and is frequently influenced by a small number of high-profile shows. Last year, Cock – starring Jonathan Bailey – saw producers disastrously try and flog £400 tickets, stating it was based on “supply and demand”

What are we to conclude from this?

As in many economic situations, there is a squeezed middle: theatre lovers who are neither wealthy enough to buy premium tickets and who don’t have a flexible work / life pattern to queue in person or online for discounted tickets. 

Seven Card Stud



Surely, extending personalised pricing to students or the unwaged, which was widespread in the 1980s, would maximise audiences. That said, personalised pricing can be progressive. In Finland, for example, speeding tickets are based on your income

All the same, I worry that we shall soon reach the point of no return, that the gap between the commercial and subsidised sector is growing ever wider and that the young will be put off by high prices. Of course, the system is broken, it’s not working for weary audiences.

But it’s not just the rising ticket prices that worry me. It’s also the sense of banality afflicting the West End. There are, as ever, 33 musicals of varying quality currently running. We should ponder both the escalating cost of tickets and the actual quality of what is on offer. 

Anyway, I’m with singer Neil Young who last week said it best: “It’s over” and that “the old days are gone” amid wider consternation at ticketing company’s pricing policies. And that is where we are. 

Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran in A Streetcar Named Desire

Since the success of the subsidised and commercial sectors are intimately bound, it can’t just be left to subsidised theatre to take responsibility for building tomorrow’s audiences, the West End has to play – and pay – its part too.

A Streetcar Named Desire runs until 6 May

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A Streetcar Named Desire is everything you want Theatre to be

Mescal, Credit…Marc Brenner


First things first, Paul Mescal is tremendous. He makes bully Stanley Kowalski terrifying yet sensitive, while Anjana Vasan as his wife Stella is magnificent – – blind to his brutality.

Kowalski is the epitome of toxic masculinity, a character devoid of empathy and kindness.

Alas, blue-collar Stanley sees that the unexpected sister-in-law Blanche DuBois is not what she appears to be, and sets out to destroy her. Patsy Ferran excels as the disintegrating dame in director Rebecca Frecknall’s grand production of the 1947 Tennessee Williams play. 

Ferran who stepped in to play Blanche last month when Lydia Wilson withdrew due to an injury, is completely mesmerising.

Madeleine Girling’s empty raised platform, under Lee Curran’s lighting, makes the in-the-round battle for territory fully absorbing. Frecknall honours Williams in not making it easy to take sides.

This seriously unsettling production with few props barrels along: the furious jazz drum score (designed by Peter Rice) sometimes becomes intrusive and occasionally makes the dialogue hard to hear.  

But on the whole the nerve jangling a capella singing, percussion and symphonic swells work to the play’s advantage: they punctuate Stanley’s rancour and Blanches downward spiral. 

As Blanche loses first her dignity and then her mind, an audience’s emotions is left in shreds. I wept as Blanche walked from the auditorium. 

This multi-faceted show lasts around three hours, but there isn’t a moment when the drink-fuelled tension drops or focus of the ensemble lapses.

Pasty Ferran as Blanche

The Almeida’s A Streetcar Named Desire – the play’s fifth major UK revival in the last 20 years – is everything you want theatre to be: vital, challenging, intellectually alive, visually stunning, emotionally affecting.

Yet my memories of this spiky production will be of lean, sexy and pitch perfect Mescal who roars like a goaded boar – “I’m king around here.” He mimicks a tiger, in the infamous show-down scene

It’s a savage tour de force not only from Mescal and Ferran but everyone involved, and awards will follow: a west end transfer has been announced

So if you haven’t got a ticket, try relying on the kindness of strangers.

A Streetcar Named Desire runs at the Almeida, London, until 4 February.

The National Theatre adds new productions to streaming platform NT at Home

A Streetcar Named Desire, Under Milk Wood and Home

The National Theatre has today announced the latest productions to be made available on its National Theatre at Home streaming platform. Launching today, the Young Vic and Joshua Andrews’ production of Tennessee Williams’ timeless masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire featuring Gillian Anderson as Blanche DuBois, Ben Foster as Stanley and Vanessa Kirby as Stella, the NT’s recent production of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood with Michael Sheen and Nadia Fall’s verbatim play Home that explores homelessness in the UK featuring Michaela Coel. New productions are added each month and since launching in December 2020, there are now 31 productions available to stream on the platform.

It is also announced today some of the productions that audiences can expect to see on the platform in the coming months. Those productions are confirmed to include Antony & Cleopatra with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo in the title roles; Hedda Gabler with Ruth Wilson in the title role; Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls in the Lyttelton theatre from 2019Sally Cookson’s 2017 production of Peter Pan; Yaël Farber’s Salomé and James Graham’s political drama This House, alongside current NT productions; Kae Tempest’s Paradise with Lesley Sharp and Winsome Pinnock’s Rockets and Blue LightsIan McKellen on Stage will also join the platform this autumn for audiences outside the UK and Ireland. It is currently available in the UK and Ireland for Amazon Prime subscribers.

Under Milk Wood and A Streetcar Named Desirewill also be available from today with audio-description to support blind and partially sighted audiences worldwide. There are now 19 National Theatre at Home titles available with audio-description. All productions on National Theatre at Home are available with captions.

National Theatre at Home is available at ntathome.com, with single titles available from £5.99 – £8.99, a monthly subscription for £9.99 or a yearly subscription for £99.99. 

National Theatre at Home is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

National Theatre at Home is also supported by The Linbury Trust. 

#NationalTheatreatHome       

A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams

A Young Vic and Joshua Andrews Co-production                                 

As Blanche’s fragile world crumbles, she turns to her sister Stella for solace – but her downward spiral brings her face to face with the brutal, unforgiving Stanley Kowalski.

Tennessee Williams’ timeless masterpiece features Gillian Anderson as Blanche DuBois, Ben Foster as Stanley and Vanessa Kirby as Stella.

Filmed by National Theatre Live at the Young Vic in 2014, Benedict Andrews (Three Sisters, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) directs with design by Magda Willi, costumes by Victoria Behr, light by Jon Clark, sound by Paul Arditti, music by Alex Baranowski, dialect by Rick Lipton, voice by Richard Ryder, fight by Bret Yount and assistant direction by Natasha Nixon, with UK casting by Maggie Lunn CDG and Camilla Evans CDG and US casting by Jim Carnahan CSA.

The cast also includes Clare Burt, Lachele Carl, Branwell Donaghey, Otto Farrant, Nicholas Gecks, Troy Glasgow, Stephanie Jacob, Corey Johnson and Claire Prempeh.

Filmed by National Theatre Live, a production from the Young Vic and Joshua Andrews.

Available until at least 8 September 2022.

Under Milk Wood
by Dylan Thomas
additional material by Sian Owen

The retired sea captain yearning for his lost love. The landlady living in terror of her guests. A father who can no longer access his memories. A son in search of redemption.

As they awake to boiled eggs and the postman, the residents of a small Welsh village juggle old secrets and new realities.

Michael Sheen, Karl Johnson and Siân Phillips feature in the acting company breathing new life into Dylan Thomas’ poetic masterpiece. NT Associate Lyndsey Turner directs.

The cast also includes Susan Brown, Ifan Huw Dafydd, Alan David, Michael Elwyn, Kezrena James, Gaynor Morgan Rees, Anthony O’Donnell and Cleo Sylvestre.

Set and costume design is by Merle Hensel, lighting design by Tim Lutkin, movement by Imogen Knight, songs composed by Edward-Rhys Harry, and sound design and additional compositions by Donato Wharton.

Under Milk Wood opened in the reconfigured Olivier-in-the-round theatre on 16 June 2021, reopening the Olivier after closures due to lockdown.

This is an enhanced recording from the National Theatre, available until at least 8 September 2022.

Home
by Nadia Fall

Bullet doesn’t want to call a hostel home. Eritrean Girl was smuggled here in a lorry. Singing Boy dreams of seeing his name in lights and Garden Boy just wants to feel safe.

Homelessness amongst young people in the UK is at a record high, so when the big society doesn’t work – where do you go? An inner-city high-rise hostel, TargetEast, offers a roof.

Nadia Fall’s verbatim play features performances from Michaela Coel, Antonia Thomas and Kadiff Kirwan.

The cast also includes Jonathan Coote, Trevor Michael Georges, Ashley McGuire, Grace Savage, Shakka and Toby Wharton.

Home is directed by Nadia Fall with designs by Ruth Sutcliffe, lighting by Ciaran Bagnall, movement by Jack Murphy, music by Tom Green and Shakka, music direction by Gareth Valentine, fight direction by Kate Waters, sound design by Mike Walker and company voice work by Richard Ryder.

Filmed in the Temporary Theatre at the NT in 2013, this is a recording from the National Theatre Archive and it’s available until at least 8 September 2022.