Gossip

Could MasterCard Do a Travelex in West End???

The Travelex Season at the National Theatre, in which two-thirds of the tickets in the NT Olivier have been sold for £10 for the past seven years (going up to £12 this year), has reinvigorated audiences on the South Bank. Could a similar scheme ever be practicable in the commercial West End? At today’s press launch for the “revitalised” Laurence Olivier Awards, at which the headline sponsor was revealed as MasterCard, Society of London Theatre (SOLT) chief executive Julian Bird may well be in the pipeline as part of an ongoing partnership with the deep investment pockets of the global credit card company, intent on helping to “underline London’s status as the world centre for theatre”. Let’s hope if such a scheme does materialise, it won’t be exclusive to MasterCard customers…