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Confessions of a Box Office Manager: Right show, wrong country

From Melbourne to Milwaukee, our West End mole gently asks, are you __sure__ you’re buying tickets in the right location?

"But I've never even BEEN to New York City!" she exclaims, "I come from Charlotte, North Carolina!"

She looks as though she might actually cry. That's a lot of eye make-up to be hitting the foyer carpet if so. Better head her off at the pass, so to speak.

"Ok" I say, "but, just to be clear, you booked these tickets yourself online?"

"I did."

"And then you downloaded the tickets and printed them at home?" (I assiduously avoid making eye contact with the usher who has accompanied this nice, if bewildered, lady up to the Box Office as I can see his shoulders starting to shake with inappropriate mirth.)

"I sure did."

What I WANT to say now is "and at no point did you look at the tickets and clock that, hang on, the theatre address on here says West 40-something Street, NYC, but I am booking seats for a show in London's glittering West End? Didn't you think that was a bit, you know, odd?"

However, since the situation is already threatening to turn unnecessarily lachrymose, I instead cheerily point out that yes, she has tickets for this show… but for the Broadway rather than the London production: right title, wrong city. But worry not, I can get you into some seats. On THIS side of the Atlantic.

I stop short of saying that it's very easily done – because it really, really isn't, although it isn't technically impossible, clearly – and I also censor myself from saying that it's a pity Concorde isn't in service any longer, as if she left now she could still make curtain-up in New York, even allowing for the time difference. That could be construed, correctly, as sarcasm.

I reason that passing this lady into our performance is only fair as she has already been charged once, and as it is the same producer for both stagings, all the dollars and pounds effectively go into the same pot; Broadway prices being what they are, she has actually paid more than if she'd bought tickets for the London production, although the day-to-day running costs of the show are a lot higher on the other side of the Atlantic than they are here.

After she has been escorted, beaming with gratitude, back to the Dress Circle (her tickets, being American, stated "Mezzanine" of course, another indication that the booking was wrong), and after the curtain has gone up, I log onto the shows website, click on the booking link and am given a clear choice as to which city I want to see the production in. It even asks me if I'm sure I'm buying for the right location. I could also obtain tickets for it in Melbourne and the touring version in Milwaukee… right off the same website. Marvellous.

Life in Charlotte NC must be enormously distracting; either that or our erroneous patron is appalling at geography, but I smile at the thought that in approximately five hours, the curtain will be going up on the Broadway production of our show, with a pair of empty seats right in the middle of the front row of the Dress… I mean Mezzanine. Their loss is our gain, I guess… and, hey, nobody died.

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