To book, or not to book?

I like going to the theatre. I go lots. But with the plethora of theatres offering Free Under-26 Tickets I don’t always pay full price. All you have to do is have enough time on your hands to ring round all the theatres well in advance. Add to that the occasional press night (I think I’m invited to these because I’m desperate enough to always be free at last minute to fill empty seats; also, I clap a lot, so must be one of the over-enthusiastic audience members).

So it’s come as a real shock to me when I tried to book up some tickets to Les Miserables. A belated birthday present for a friend, I and several others are treating them to a night out in the West End. We’ve chosen the show. We’ve chosen the date. But we haven’t bought tickets yet.

Imagine a holiday; better, imagine a holiday planned by your super-forward-planning grandparents. The destination (show - bear with me) would be picked. Then the dates. Then the tickets booked and paid for. Then probably half a year would pass before you actually went on holiday. And all the while the holiday operator (theatre producer - you’re getting it) would already have your money, know that you were coming, know that some destinations were more popular, while more marketing was needed for tickets to somewhere like Greece (too obvious?). 

The point is that they travel agents can plan for demand. Because they know what that demand was like in advance. And to encourage people into booking early (so they could cancel flights that were underused, don’t lose money pointlessly) they make early tickets cheap. It’s even called airline pricing.

The logic seems to be that given how expensive it would be to fly halfway round the world with only six passengers, we better make damn sure we know which flights are going to be empty well in advance of take off so we can do something about it.

Now what I’ve learnt about theatre producing so far may be limited, but it does include the fact that playing to audiences of six people is really expensive. Not to mention dispiriting for the cast and crew; no one wants empty chairs (or even empty tables). People booking up in advance are pretty important. But are they encouraged to do so with tempting cheap deals on super advance deals? Apart from Southwark Playhouse, I can’t find a single theatre doing it.

So, Les Mis tickets. Have I booked miles in advance? No. In fact, I don’t plan to book at all. There’s no point. At the end of the day, either I pay full price now and secure good seats, or I wait until the day of performance and see if there are any at the half price tkts booths. 

Hopefully there won’t be a run on tickets that’ll see me queuing at an absurd hour...