Cheap seats The Royal Court
THEATRE 020799
81901
SPECIAL OFFER
Alan Copson, Robert Harding, Rex Features / GETTY / Ewan Munro / ANDY ROBERTS PHOTOS
W
Community Tickets each week at £5 and £10 to those who work or live in Lambeth. Over at Sloane Square’s Royal Court, anyone can snap up on-the-day tickets for £10 on Mondays. Or if you’ve got the stamina, buy one of four standing tickets (restricted view) per performance for just 10p – now there’s a bargain. In the West End, the esteemed Donmar Warehouse’s Barclays Front Row scheme offers £10 front row seats for every performance, while the new Trafalgar Transformed season at Trafalgar Studios – kicking off in February with James McAvoy as Macbeth – prices all seats at £15 on Mondays. Over the river, the National Theatre’s long-running Travelex sponsorship makes £12 tickets available across a season of shows. Naturally, these kinds of tickets sell-out fast, so find out when they go on sale and get in there quickly. The less organised (or more spontaneous) among us should head for the tkts booth in Leicester Square, which offers on-theday discount tickets to West End shows. Or consider queuing (sometimes from the early hours) at your chosen theatre’s box office for a limited number of day seats, which can be as little as £10 –
0001-0025
ith so-called ‘premium’ seats now edging towards £90, it’s not hard to feel priced out of London theatre. But there are ways of seeing top-flight shows without leaving a sizeable dent in your dosh – you just need to know where to look. In your local neighbourhood, for starters. Just because they’re not in the West End doesn’t mean the work at suburban theatres will be any less impressive – though it will be cheaper. Prices at the Lyric Hammersmith, Hampstead Theatre, Islington’s Almeida and the Young Vic in Waterloo, for example, are a reasonable £10-£35. And the marvellous Battersea Arts Centre rarely charges over £20 for some of the most cutting-edge shows in town. The Lyric offers all seats at £12.50 for the first few performances of every show, while its Free First Nights scheme gifts Hammersmith & Fulham residents two free tickets to a show’s first performance. Waterloo’s Old Vic also favours its locals, offering 50
Daily ticket lottery The Book of Mormon
for a top West End show, that’s probably worth getting up early for. The forthcoming musical The Book of Mormon has a nifty variation on day seats: take part in its daily lottery to be in with a chance of securing two tickets to that night’s show for £20 each. A safer bet is the annual Get Into London Theatre promotion, which offers advanced tickets to top shows like Shrek and One Man Two Guvnors from £10-£35. It’s currently running to February 15, but last year returned for the summer months – here’s hoping for a repeat performance in 2013. Caroline Bishop
Discount shows The tkts booth in Leicester Square
scoutlondon.com Scout London
9