29 replies to this topic

[Nathan]

My biggest gripe with the National (and it has been brought up before on this board) was their rescinding of the advance 'Under 25' concession.

Their response to any complaint was that firstly the Travelex season was lowering ticket prices (fair enough) and that any 'Under 25' can come to the theatre at 10am for day seats or could try to get hold of a standby ticket before the performance. Again I accept that this is more than most theatres do for young people - though I do find that policy incredibly biased towards young people in London who are able to pass the theatre just before a performance to see if standbys are availabe - what about young people living outside of London? Or productions which have sold out?

Bizarrely the National did not choose to rescind their 'Senior Citizens' advance concession (even if this is only available for midweek matinees) - probably because they remembered the old adage of not biting the hand that feeds you! Though this hardly reflects well on a theatre which is trying to encourage young people to get involved!

From an economics point of view surely the National is shooting themselves in the foot... To discourage young people from going to the theatre will not necessarily encourage them to become regular theatre-goers once they are earning a wage and can afford the ordinary prices (a bit like the argument for subsidising university fees etc).

[Jan Brock]

Have you ever been to a midweek matinee ? Average age of the audience is about 100. Of course they offer them cheap tickets - that is the only way to fill the theatre for those performances. Offering cheap tickets purely on the basis of age is idiotic - plenty of under 25s in London can afford the full price. I have said before here that I don't want under 18s in the theatre anyway - they behave like idiots and scream with embarrassed laughter when anything vaguely "romantic" happens on stage - keep 'em out, say I.

[David]

I have said before here that I don't want under 18s in the theatre anyway - they behave like idiots and scream with embarrassed laughter when anything vaguely "romantic" happens on stage - keep 'em out, say I.

Funny; I'm under 18, and I've never noticed myself doing this in a theatre, nor have I noticed people I've been with doing so.
Will have to keep an eye on my 'behaving like an idiot' in the future. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Paul]

Offering cheap tickets purely on the basis of age is idiotic - plenty of under 25s in London can afford the full price. I have said before here that I don't want under 18s in the theatre anyway

Offering cheaper tickets to younger people is potentially creating more regular theatregoers (and therefore ticket-buyers) for the future.

And as for the generalised statement about under 18s, what a complete load of rubbish. I've had just as many "annoying" over 18s in audiences as under 18s, when I've been to the theatre.

[Backdrifter]

I don't want under 18s in the theatre anyway - they behave like idiots and scream with embarrassed laughter when anything vaguely "romantic" happens on stage - keep 'em out, say I.

as for the generalised statement about under 18s, what a complete load of rubbish. I've had just as many "annoying" over 18s in audiences as under 18s, when I've been to the theatre.

I've said this many times before but it's always worth saying again. In my experience, the worst-behaved audience members tend to be the middle-aged middle-class and the elderly. I think on just one occasion I had to ask some teenage schoolboys to be quiet and they did. The tiny number of school pupil/under-18 'incidents' is grossly outnumbered by the instances of unacceptable behaviour from adults, mostly people who seem to think it's okay to talk at audible volume during a performance. On a number of the occasions that I've politely asked adults to be quiet, I've had very negative reactions of the who-do-you-think-you-are type, or just abuse. And as for the elderly... do not go to Richmond Theatre matinees if you prefer to watch a play undistracted by audible chit-chat, endlessly rustling sweet wrappers, and carrier bags being rummaged around in, or if you get irritated by ice-cream and programme-stall queue-jumping. And it's not just Richmond, although it seems most rife there. Yvonne Arnaud matinees are too annoying for me to go into any more detail, other than that you get all of the above with an even bigger dose of haughty superior wealthy commuter-belt genteel stuffed-jumperish obnoxiousness. Compared to that, give me a gang of schoolkids any day and ban the elderly.

[Backdrifter]

But my parents are middle aged middle class and trained me to be perfectly quiet in the theatre!

I think there are two different segments of the middle class - the kind of people who always go to the theatre and have a lot of respect for it, and the kind you speak of who are very stuck up and rude. I don't think you can lump  the 'middle class' together, just as Jan Brock shouldn't lump under 18s together.

I merely meant to convey who were the most frequent miscreants in my personal theatre-going experience (which in fairness to me I think I did do, having just re-read my post), as a riposte to the often-repeated notion that under-18s are the most common source of irritation in theatres. I didn't mean to "lump together" the middle-classes or suggest they are all automatically condemned in my book.

And good for your parents for instilling good theatre manners in you!

[Jan Brock]

Well, I admit I was talking about London theatre - of course Richmond, Yvonne Arnaud and (worst of the lot) Chichester feature appalling audience behaviour at all times - you are lucky if 75% of the audience has arrived at the appointed time at Chichester, for example, with hoards of them noisily coming in over the first 20-30 minutes of the production. I don't go there any more.