Jul 21, 2008
Good news: There are multiple means of cutting your theater-going costs in London
The West End in London rivals Broadway in New York for its range of high-quality, big-budget stage performances. But currently (and for the foreseeable future), you pay two American dollars for just one pound. Since tickets for London's musicals cost about £50 to £60, accessing much of that world-class entertainment is problematic.
But you don't have to pay that much. Exactly as in New York, most London productions (save the ones that are sold out for weeks on end) offer discounts, if only you know where to find them. Several websites round up the going deals, present them to you, and then give you the necessary discount codes and links to book them yourself.
One of those sites is Theatremonkey.com (www.theatremonkey.com), which lists half-price promotions and meal-and-a-ticket packages. The site BroadwayBox.com (www.broadwaybox.com/london), which is mostly about New York, also brings some West End discount codes to the masses.
Some other ways to save?
If all else fails, you can buy same-day, half-price tickets to a range of shows (including dance) at the TKTS booth (www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/tkts) on the south side of Leicester Square. Like the Manhattan booth that inspired it, tickets are half-price there, but unlike the New York booth, it accepts credit cards, not just cash, adding to its convenience.
Happy theater going, mates!
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But you don't have to pay that much. Exactly as in New York, most London productions (save the ones that are sold out for weeks on end) offer discounts, if only you know where to find them. Several websites round up the going deals, present them to you, and then give you the necessary discount codes and links to book them yourself.
One of those sites is Theatremonkey.com (www.theatremonkey.com), which lists half-price promotions and meal-and-a-ticket packages. The site BroadwayBox.com (www.broadwaybox.com/london), which is mostly about New York, also brings some West End discount codes to the masses.
Some other ways to save?
- Given a lead time of a few weeks, lastminute.com (www.lastminute.com) sells many shows for half price, as does LOVEtheatre.com (www.lovetheatre.com; click "Special Offers"). Booking fees of a few pounds usually apply.
- Matinees are often slightly cheaper than evening shows.
- Ask at box offices about standing room tickets. Not all theaters have them, but the Donmar, the National, and the Old Vic, to take three examples, do, and they sell for under 10 pounds. These are usually only available if the show's seats are sold out.
- Seats at the very back of the theater might cost a quarter to a third of what the seats in the front do -- but bring opera glasses.
- Some older theaters sell what are called restricted-view seats. You may have to crane your neck at times to see around the edge of the balcony or a pillar, and if the staging has actors at the extreme sides of the stage you might not be able to see them momentarily, but you'll be in the room. Such seats cost about a third what top-price seats do. Theatremonkey.com posts audience members' opinions about which theatres have decent restricted-view seats and which are too terrible to consider.
- If you're a student and can prove it with I.D., some box offices may offer you discounts of 20% to 40%.
If all else fails, you can buy same-day, half-price tickets to a range of shows (including dance) at the TKTS booth (www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/tkts) on the south side of Leicester Square. Like the Manhattan booth that inspired it, tickets are half-price there, but unlike the New York booth, it accepts credit cards, not just cash, adding to its convenience.
Happy theater going, mates!
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Jan 23, 2008
The smart traveler uses the Internet to buy reduced-price tickets to shows and events, prior to arriving at the destination
It's hard to imagine that any savvy user of Frommers.com isn't already aware of what's out there in the theater-ticket-world. But because the players are constantly growing in number and variety, the subject should be discussed. There's been an explosion recently in online "secondary market" ticket sites -- which is just a fancy term for virtual ticket scalpers. The difference is, this kind of scalping is increasingly tolerated, even encouraged, by the industry. At the very least, you won't get into any trouble using the (guaranteed) tickets bought on these sites (though some sports teams still penalize season ticket holders discovered reselling their seats).
The biggest players are StubHub! (www.stubhub.com) (bought by Ebay in 2007) and TicketsNow (www.ticketsnow.com) (recently purchased by Ticketmaster), though you should always check competitors like TheaterMania.com (www.theatermania.com), RazorGator (www.razorgator.com), and EZTicketSearch.com (www.ezticketsearch.com). Most of these limit the bulk of their offerings to venues in the United States, though shows on London's West End do crop up sometimes at TheaterMania.com (as well as at the TKTS outlet in London).
These sites excel at providing three categories of tickets: discounts on shows, concerts, plays, and other regularly scheduled events; regular-price tickets for sold-out events; and impossible-to-obtain tickets at a premium price (so, yes, you can get Super Bowl tickets -- if you have an extra $3,000 lying around). So if attending a show, concert, or game is part of your upcoming travel plans, you owe it to yourself to check out these sites.
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The biggest players are StubHub! (www.stubhub.com) (bought by Ebay in 2007) and TicketsNow (www.ticketsnow.com) (recently purchased by Ticketmaster), though you should always check competitors like TheaterMania.com (www.theatermania.com), RazorGator (www.razorgator.com), and EZTicketSearch.com (www.ezticketsearch.com). Most of these limit the bulk of their offerings to venues in the United States, though shows on London's West End do crop up sometimes at TheaterMania.com (as well as at the TKTS outlet in London).
These sites excel at providing three categories of tickets: discounts on shows, concerts, plays, and other regularly scheduled events; regular-price tickets for sold-out events; and impossible-to-obtain tickets at a premium price (so, yes, you can get Super Bowl tickets -- if you have an extra $3,000 lying around). So if attending a show, concert, or game is part of your upcoming travel plans, you owe it to yourself to check out these sites.
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Labels: events, theater, websites
Aug 1, 2007
On your next visit to London, don't miss Shakespeare at the re-created Globe Theater
I am standing in the pit, my elbows and chin upon the stage. Behind me the other so-called groundlings are shouting lusty comments to the actor playing Lorenzo, who replies in kind. We are watching Merchant of Venice as Shakespeare meant it to be presented, in a duplicate of the very setting that he helped construct, and near the very same location; and it is a culmination, for me, of a lifetime of theatergoing, intensely moving, even awesome.
In one of the most compelling sightseeing attractions of London -- a full-sized, authentically built, wooden replica of the Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames near the Southwark Bridge -- a modern audience can now understand the stagecraft of Shakespeare as they could never know it before: the intimate interaction between the Bard's characters and his audience, the entrances and exits through curtained doors, the comic relief, the loud asides directed to onlookers packed about a protruding stage, who are often inches away from the actors on it.
You take the underground to the Mansion House station near the riverside docks, from which the Globe is a ten-minute stroll away. On my own last trip, it never occurred to me that on a Tuesday afternoon in late August (the Globe's performances are in daylight only at 2 and 7 p.m., from May through mid-September) I would need advance reservations. But when I showed visible dismay at the ticket seller's statement that the house was full, she quickly advised that I could go in as a groundling (she actually used that word) in the central open pit, for exactly £5 ($10). Groundlings are the low-income viewers standing jammed against the stage, who earlier paid only one penny (the cost at that time of a loaf of bread, or two pints of beer) in 1599, when the original Globe opened.
Your time as a groundling will undoubtedly be as enjoyable as mine was. And sunk in reveries, knowing that your consciousness of art and drama has been illuminated, you later ride back aboard the underground to Leicester Square and equip yourself with a £15 ($30) evening balcony seat for a modern non-musical play of the London stage.
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In one of the most compelling sightseeing attractions of London -- a full-sized, authentically built, wooden replica of the Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames near the Southwark Bridge -- a modern audience can now understand the stagecraft of Shakespeare as they could never know it before: the intimate interaction between the Bard's characters and his audience, the entrances and exits through curtained doors, the comic relief, the loud asides directed to onlookers packed about a protruding stage, who are often inches away from the actors on it.
You take the underground to the Mansion House station near the riverside docks, from which the Globe is a ten-minute stroll away. On my own last trip, it never occurred to me that on a Tuesday afternoon in late August (the Globe's performances are in daylight only at 2 and 7 p.m., from May through mid-September) I would need advance reservations. But when I showed visible dismay at the ticket seller's statement that the house was full, she quickly advised that I could go in as a groundling (she actually used that word) in the central open pit, for exactly £5 ($10). Groundlings are the low-income viewers standing jammed against the stage, who earlier paid only one penny (the cost at that time of a loaf of bread, or two pints of beer) in 1599, when the original Globe opened.
Your time as a groundling will undoubtedly be as enjoyable as mine was. And sunk in reveries, knowing that your consciousness of art and drama has been illuminated, you later ride back aboard the underground to Leicester Square and equip yourself with a £15 ($30) evening balcony seat for a modern non-musical play of the London stage.
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Jul 18, 2007
Travelers to Italy should be aware of the Florence International Theater Company
Important historic cities aren't noted for their nightlife. And the multitudes of young travelers descending on such places as Florence, Italy, usually congregate in bars at night for want of anywhere else to go. The result is public drunkeness, litter, noise that keeps whole neighborhoods awake, and an increasing demand by residents of Florence, Rome, Prague, and the like, to crack down on the boorish behavior of young tourists.Which is why it's important to alert your Italy-bound friends or relatives about the Florence International Theater Company that presents provocative new plays, in English, on most of the nights in high season. At www.florencetheatre.com/en, you'll see a listing of productions planned for the remainder of 2007 (Harold Pinter's Betrayal, Sam Shepherd's True West, Yasmina Reza's Art, Memories of the [Florence] Flood, Sewers of L/vov, Agnes of God) and much other useful information for enjoying both a rewarding and entertaining evening during a stay in the heavily-visited Florence.
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Jun 12, 2007
What's the top tourist attraction in America?
A caller to my Sunday program recently put the above question to me. In answering, I chose as the single top attraction those provocative small playhouses operated in such dynamic theater cities as New York, Minneapolis and Seattle; they alone can justify almost any trip. The tiny "off Broadway" and "off-off-Broadway" stages -- where little-known playwrights present their works -- have been the major means by which controversial new ideas and concerns -- apartheid in South Africa (the plays of Athol Fugard); civil rights in the U.S. (James Baldwin's Blues for Mr. Charlie, LeRoi Jones' Dutchman), feminism in western nations (plays by Caryl Churchill, The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler); the AIDS crisis and acceptance of homosexuals (Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart); the plight of the young black woman (Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls...), many others -- have broken out of academia and into the popular consciousness. They have changed America. It is disappointing to find tourists flocking to the too-often mindless musicals of the Broadway stage and neglecting to patronize the smaller theaters of New York where profound new issues are being raised.
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Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
