CHORUS LINE Tickets - $301.25. DISGUSTING! — Page 4

Who cares about the premium seats. If people will buy them then the producers found a way to make a buck. I don't fault them for that (except when there are more than a few seats being sold at that price). The problem is that the cheapest seats are unaffordable. A modest family from NJ or Conn. can't handle that. Young theatre professionals can't handle that. No one's denying the fact that producers need and should make some money but if ticket prices are so freakin expensive that no one can afford it, then maybe the audiences should use their imagination a little more rather than expect a 3 million dollar set with moving mirrors. The "mirrors" moved splendedly back in the days theatre was cheaper.

Well it certainly better not be Les Miz

well Pajama Game won
and that was dreck
I hope the revival TONY goes to a rethinking of a show and not a wax Museum piece.

I can't even begin to explain how one justifies paying $300 for a single ticket, but I can say for sure that there are numerous people ponying up this amount for their ACL tix. I noticed a number of stubs this afternoon with that price prominently marked in bold, and it does seem that there are more wealthy foreign tourists and local aristocrats than one might think. It must be nice to have $300. I could eat for a month on that.

---

Updated On: 10/9/06 at 01:33 AM

I think that it is too much to pay for sitting for 2 hours. But why not buy seats that are farther away in the Mezz? I purchased the 25 dollars tickets for Drowsy Chaperone and still saw everything just as well as if I'd have purchased the Orchestra seating. I don't particularly like the Lottery system (probably because out of the three different times trying I didn't win). But if you want to see a show bad enough you will find the cheaper ticket prices. I once purchased the partial view seats in Chicago for All Shook Up and only missed 1 small detail at one point but saw the entire show. But unless you have the money to spend such as 300 dollars for a seat, then by all means spend the money. For my money, the show had better be well worth it.

---

As a child of obscenely rich parents who is probably spoiled rotten by seeing all these shows, even I think that's too much. When it gets to the point that only old rich people, eletists, and their children can see shows, Broadway just isn't reaching enough people, and eventually it will collapse on itself.

That price may make you ill, but who is holding a gun to your head to buy the ticket at that price? Don't go....

---

ghostlight - and they pay their receptionists $9.00 an hour. I interviewed for a staff job there a couple of years ago and was blown away. People can't live on that, and yet look what their execs make! Revolting.

allofmylife, that is very interesting. I feel better now about not being alive during "The Golden Age."

---

The issue really is the false sense of demand. When a show reserves over 50% of its orchestra seats as premium (*cough* Spamalot *cough*) then it reduces the number of seats people can afford at other prices, substantially. Example: Say I want to buy a top price orchestra seat ($112), but the box office can't find me a seat in that range. So then I start going down in price for seats until I find one. So all the less expensive seats start to sell out because people who would have paid the normal top price are told there are no seats left, when in fact the bulk of them are selling for $300 and have yet to be sold. Then, with all the *demand* for tickets, people see there are VIP tix available and purchase those, because the show is so *hot* they have no choice. Personally, I feel it is time to regulate this premium VIP seat nonsense, and enforce the ticket re-sale law. But also, while a good percentage of VIP ticketholders for newer shows are probably the well-to-do rich people, I would hazard a guess that these seats, when not released at normal prices, are occupied by corporate drones.

Not to defend producers, but they're simply pricing Broadway tickets to reflect supply and demand and to fall more in line with the sort of pricing other entertainment forms have been getting away with for many years:

-- Courtside seats to see the Knicks go for $2500 a piece and tickets in the sections nearest to the floor (the equivalent of orchestra seats in a theatre) are $350. Even tix two levels up are $100-$250. You have to go at least three levels up before you can get a seat for under $100 (and frankly from there the view is so bad, you end up watching most of the action on the jumbotron screen above the court).

-- At the Metropolitan Opera, orchestra and parterre (1st tier) tickets range from $120 - $375 for most operas. For seats less than $100, you have to go 4 levels up (to the balcony)

-- Concert ticket prices can be truly outrageous, depending on the performer (Streisand is charging up to $750; even the worst seat in the house is at least $100).

There is an enormous market of people out there who are willing to pay practically any price to get prime seats for live entertainment when they're in town, so Broadway producers would be stupid not to take advantage of it. We live in a city where the average cost of a one bedroom apartment is more than $1 million, a single night in a hotel room can cost $1000+ and there are thousands of tourists and businessmen on expense account in town every week for whom $300 per ticket is mere pocket change (or a tax write off).

For myself, as a person who enjoys live theatre, concerts and opera (and even the occasional basketball game) and who isn't as financially fortunate as those named above, I'm somewhat taken aback by the ever-escalating prices of the these things that I enjoy. But, on the other hand, I completely understand that this is just the way things are and charging whatever the market will bear is simply sound business and the way American capitalism works. It's not as if there's some constitutional right to see theatre for a cheap price. And hey, if you're an investor in a Broadway show, considering what a total crap shoot it is (and that typically only about a third or so of them in any season end up recouping) then you deserve to see a return on your investment in any way possible (keep investors happy and they'll be more willing to risk more money in the future on other shows). So, while I'll personally never pay $300 to see any play -- and, unless I hit the lottery, will be scouring the internet for discounts for the foreseeable future -- I don't begrudge producers charging what they can get. However, I do wish they'd use some of that extra income from the premium seating to subsidize a few more reasonably-priced seats.

---

Hmm It seems that theatre in London is alive and well AND they have reasonable prices for tickets.

Corporate drones who may be able to write it off as a business expense meaning we wind up paying for it in the end

---

As far as England is concerned (and Australia, for that matter), other than Idina's ridiculous salary, their lead actors are paid FAR less than ours. I'm guessing it's the same for all the unions over there.

---