The price of West End theatre tickets can be ludicrous and risks strangling the next generation of theatregoers, David Tennant has said.
Some shows, such as Cabaret and A Streetcar Named Desire, charge as much as £300 for a seat. Top ticket prices increased by 20% between 2019 and 2022, according to the Stage website, as theatre sought to recoup losses incurred during the pandemic. Top prices have since stabilised. The average price for the most expensive tickets for West End productions in 2023 was £141.37.
The cheapest seats, which often have a restricted view, increased by almost 13% this year compared with last. Most venues have discounted tickets for young people.
Many tickets are bought by touts who offer them for resale on unofficial sites at vastly inflated prices. When Tennant played Hamlet in 2008, tickets were offered by touts for more than £1,100 a pair.
Tennant, 52, who has starred as the Doctor in Doctor Who and has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, said theatre seats were beyond the reach of younger audiences.
“Live theatre is expensive and it’s increasingly expensive to run and therefore the ticket prices are increasingly expensive, and that’s a difficult thing to rationalise,” Tennant told the Radio Times podcast.
“Because obviously I would like to imagine that’s something that everyone should be allowed to enjoy, and yet when I’m in a show in the West End I’m aware that there are tickets selling for ludicrous amounts of money.
“But they get sold, at which point you think: ‘Well, what’s the theatre management supposed to do?’ If it’s a commercial enterprise, should they be expected to give tickets away?
“The danger is you’re strangling the next generation of an audience coming through.”
Tennant said the value to the British economy of the arts was acknowledged during the pandemic when the government offered a rescue package to theatres and other cultural venues.
“I think that was quite telling; there was an acknowledgment and understanding that when push comes to shove, we can’t let those industries die because they are important creatively and artistically, but also they are just a financial engine,” he said.
“The creative arts are one of our biggest exports, one of the things we do make money from as a country.
“It would be nice if it didn’t have to be a crisis that prompted the electric paddles to come out to make sure this corpse can lumber on.”
He added: “We want these industries to be sustainable because in this country – it’s true around the world but it’s very true in this country – what happens in the theatre sponsors, promotes and feeds into what happens on our screens.
“People, like Steve Daldry, like Peter Morgan, like Jack Thorne, who are the creators of our bigger TV and film successes, they started in the theatres and they started in subsidised theatre.”
This year Sir Derek Jacobi said high ticket prices were making theatre “elitist”. Speaking at the Olivier awards ceremony, where the actor, 84, was being honoured with a lifetime achievement prize, he said it had been much easier to see plays cheaply when he was starting out in the business.
Tennant will appear in Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, London, from December until February 2024. Tickets, ranging from £23 to £69, have sold out.
