West End Theatres Consider Sunday Opening
Date: 30 March 1999
Schedules for West End theatres may soon be changing to accommodate an increasing demand for weekend performances. Traditionally, West End theatres have been closed on Sundays, but under a proposal from the Society of London Theatre (SOLT), the marketing body for the capital's main commercial theatres, theatres would open on Sundays and close on Monday nights when audiences tend to be smaller.
The Sunday opening schedule is one that has proved popular on Broadway, particularly with tourists and family audiences. In London, fringe theatres tend to follow this schedule, but only three West End shows currently do - Yasmina Reza s Art at Wyndham's Theatre, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at the Criterion, and the musical Buddy at the Strand. All three hold late matinees on Sunday - 5pm for Art and 4pm for the other two - and claim that these performances are very successful. Such anecdotal evidence is supported by a recent MORI survey which found that one-third of theatregoers would go to the theatre more often if they could go on a Sunday.
SOLT hopes to run a six-month pilot for Sunday opening to test its feasibility. The society is currently in negotiations with unions, particularly BECTU, the backstage workers union to make this possible. Discussions of pay rates are continuing. One proposal is that Sunday working would be permitted on a voluntary basis but at twice the normal rate of pay.
A spokeswoman for SOLT, however, told What's On Stage today that there were still no guarantees that the schedule change would happen. “We re at a very, very delicate stage of negotiations with the unions at the moment,” she said. “Certainly nothing is happening yet. If it does go ahead, it will be at least another six months to a year before the trial begins.”
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