More musings on the highs and lows of ticket prices: In a what-about-the-little-guys column in Wednesday's NY Post, Riedel reports on the irony* of the Broadway transfer of Billy Elliot, a show about lower-class struggles, establishing a record-high base price for orchestra seats of $135.
Broadway has turned its back on the working and middle classes. If you're not rich, if you don't have a loft in SoHo or a three-bedroom on the Upper West Side or a house in Westport, get lost, we don't need you, you can't afford us. If you really want to take the family to a show, check out the Ice Capades.
The Playgoer imagines the producers' mindset:
And so, maybe you stop caring that more and more "regular folk" are not going to be able to afford theatregoing as a regular habit. And you start caring a lot more about a) those who can afford it, or at least can "expense" it. And, b) those who will still splurge once a year--i.e. those for whom theatregoing is rare and expensive event (like a Vegas show or a 4-star restaurant), not part of their regular artistically nurturing diet. This naturally includes tourists, even very middle-class, middle-income tourists who can't really afford it either, but will pay it once in a blue moon to treat their spouse and/or family.
As Broadway goes, the "regular folk" ship may have sailed, as we learned from Frank Rich when TOC talked to him for our Theater cover story last month.
“When I arrived as drama critic [in New York] in the ’80s, the audience was one third tourists and two thirds from the tristate area,” Rich says, quoting statistics from the League of American Theaters. “It’s now flipped. A lot of these big shows, which are corporate brands, they are primarily for tourists.”
The big Broadway shows these days, with "premium" ticket prices reaching $300–$400, have apparently given up the pretense that they're in business for the average New Yorker; instead they're catering to expense accounts and tourists.
Chicago ticket prices aren't at nearly the same level of crazy as Broadway, and that's largely because the majority of Chicago theater is nonprofit. (There's a reason that Broadway is referred to as a "theater industry" and in Chicago it's a "theater community.")
The newly-opened Jersey Boys tour, though, does seem to have established a new record with a top ticket price of $95. (I did a quick search of the TOC archives yesterday, and $95 is the highest top price for the Broadway in Chicago houses in the last 2 1/2 years, narrowly beating Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays at $92.50 and Wicked's current top of $90. I presume there was nothing higher before TOC's existence, but I could be wrong.) The top prices at the nonprofit theaters are downtown as well: floor seats at Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play at the Goodman, or Chicago Shakespeare's Cymbeline and Passion, run $70.
Not exactly the price-gouging of Broadway, but man—if I didn't get press comps, I wouldn't be able to afford good seats to these shows. Which probably means I wouldn't see them at all.
*Dear god, is this actually ironic? Ever since Alanis I'm terrified to employ the term for fear I'm using it wrong.
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