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Post by max on Sept 10, 2024 8:34:51 GMT
Asked at the box office last week and they said: * No Day Seats * No Today Tix (Rush or Lottery) There’s such a dearth of good play productions coming up, it’s sold very well. So it might be a case of bagging a dynamic reduced priced single seat, as they did early on with Dorian. Still very elitist not to even give the option of day seats or discounted tickets. So much for levelling up, this is as restrictive as West End theatre has ever been. Get yourself an Under 30 or a Blue Light Workers - I think..... Wording on website says: "You can purchase 2 tickets per Under 30 or Blue Light Worker ID and you must be one of the attendees." Seems to imply that the purchaser must be one of the attendees (and ID will be checked) but the other attendee in a pair doesn't have to be.....? Is that it?
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Post by jr on Sept 10, 2024 12:24:19 GMT
Still very elitist not to even give the option of day seats or discounted tickets. So much for levelling up, this is as restrictive as West End theatre has ever been. Get yourself an Under 30 or a Blue Light Workers - I think..... Wording on website says: "You can purchase 2 tickets per Under 30 or Blue Light Worker ID and you must be one of the attendees." Seems to imply that the purchaser must be one of the attendees (and ID will be checked) but the other attendee in a pair doesn't have to be.....? Is that it? Yes. They usually allow 1 guest with that type of tickets.
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Post by Being Alive on Sept 10, 2024 13:04:22 GMT
I don't think it's elitist to not offer day seats - if this is selling well enough, why should they?
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Post by Jon on Sept 10, 2024 13:25:34 GMT
I don't think it's elitist to not offer day seats - if this is selling well enough, why should they? If it was subsidised theatre then perhaps it would be seen as elitist but it's commercial theatre and it's a business at the end of the day and the producers aren't under any obligation to give discounted tickets whether as day tickets or lottery.
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Post by aspieandy on Sept 10, 2024 13:59:40 GMT
900 seats, 8 performances a week for 3 months, with prices starting at £15 is elitist? Fwiw, I make it just under 100,000 seats in all. Someone might want to punt that DP is elitist but I don't think that works, either ..
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Post by Jan on Sept 10, 2024 14:23:16 GMT
Asked at the box office last week and they said: * No Day Seats * No Today Tix (Rush or Lottery) There’s such a dearth of good play productions coming up, it’s sold very well. So it might be a case of bagging a dynamic reduced priced single seat, as they did early on with Dorian. Still very elitist not to even give the option of day seats or discounted tickets. So much for levelling up, this is as restrictive as West End theatre has ever been. Day seats mostly benefit London residents and so they are the exact opposite of levelling up. Who they actually benefit are the idle rich like me who could afford full price tickets but won’t pay for them. A purely commercial enterprise not offering discounts is not “elitist” anyway - they don’t offer discounts for the darts at Ally Pally - is that elitist ?
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Post by littlebird on Sept 10, 2024 17:15:39 GMT
Oh wow, I was definitely expecting there to be some kind of rush - last I heard it wasn't selling all that well so things must have picked up. There was a pay-what-you-can performance advertised for Thursday but I was too late seeing it.
I have a £15 ticket but I do find it constantly sad that cheap seats that aren't rush are always in the Gods. I like to see people's faces.
Does anyone know if under 30s tickets include 30 year olds?
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Member is Online
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Post by greenandbrownandblue on Sept 10, 2024 17:20:22 GMT
Does anyone know if under 30s tickets include 30 year olds? Yes these ones do according to the website
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Post by greatauntedna on Sept 10, 2024 17:20:58 GMT
Does anyone know if under 30s tickets include 30 year olds? They do!
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Post by Phantom of London on Sept 10, 2024 18:14:57 GMT
Does anyone know if there are day seats and if so, how much? The theatre operator, who the box office works for wouldn’t have a clue about day seats, this would be done by the producer/s. As a commercial producer your prime objective is to get as much money as you can.
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Post by thaneofglamis on Sept 12, 2024 17:53:04 GMT
Still very elitist not to even give the option of day seats or discounted tickets. So much for levelling up, this is as restrictive as West End theatre has ever been. Get yourself an Under 30 or a Blue Light Workers - I think..... Wording on website says: "You can purchase 2 tickets per Under 30 or Blue Light Worker ID and you must be one of the attendees." Seems to imply that the purchaser must be one of the attendees (and ID will be checked) but the other attendee in a pair doesn't have to be.....? Is that it? I’d had my eye on this production, with my blue light card, but was put off as my partner doesn’t have one. I’d missed it saying 2 tickets per valid ID - and just noticed they’ve released a whole lot of stalls row B tickets across much of the run. Managed to get a pair on a Saturday for row B centre. The tickets are clearly printed with Under 30/Blue Light Card - 2 tickets per valid ID. Hope this helps someone! (Edit: looking at seating plans, they may have only just opened up row B for sale, possibly as the staging has been finalised, as C was previously the furthest forward on sale.)
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Post by Dave B on Sept 13, 2024 13:33:01 GMT
Anyone in last night? I understand there was some sort of open/PWYC preview. Really looking forward to this so hoping reports are good.
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Post by ordnyc123 on Sept 13, 2024 21:55:58 GMT
I just attended the first preview. I thought it was very, very good. I love the play but the quartet of actors is wonderful. It could have gone for another hour. It started at 7:36 and it ended at 10:10. Longish intermission.
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Post by andrew on Sept 13, 2024 22:48:19 GMT
Anyone in last night? I understand there was some sort of open/PWYC preview. Really looking forward to this so hoping reports are good. I was, watched from some incredible seats for £1. I really liked it and you couldn't tell it was a dress run/preview, it was really smooth apart from a couple of lighting flubs. Really good acting, Ben Whishaw and Tom Edden were my highlights.
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Post by lichtie on Sept 16, 2024 10:13:15 GMT
Personally I'm going to go with fairly average here. To me, Ben Whishaw largely played Ben Whishaw which detracted. He and Lucian Msamati caught the more playful and physical aspects of the text well, but the character of Vladimir just felt off to me. Fortunately I was in a cheap seat. If you've never seen it before then it's probably fine - if you have then it adds nothing new.
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Post by shakeel on Sept 16, 2024 20:25:18 GMT
Was not a fan, unfortunately. I’ve never seen the play before, so hard to say how much of that is down to the text rather than the production. But I found it all very unengaging, the Pozzo and Lucky scene was interminable, and Whishaw and Msamati weren’t good enough to keep me interested, personally. I was surprised to dislike it this much given I like much of what it was inspired by it (eg R&G). But I left at the interval; will watch the second act of the McKellan/Stewart version which I’ve got at home instead.
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Post by xander on Sept 17, 2024 0:25:50 GMT
How high is the stage for this? I’ve got a cheap front row ticket for Friday with a restricted view warning.
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Post by nottobe on Sept 17, 2024 9:01:10 GMT
How high is the stage for this? I’ve got a cheap front row ticket for Friday with a restricted view warning. I've not seen thus yet but looking at the seating plan now, the front row has increased to £45 meaning it must be a better view than they initially thought.
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Post by andrew on Sept 17, 2024 10:29:11 GMT
How high is the stage for this? I’ve got a cheap front row ticket for Friday with a restricted view warning. It's absolutely fine, you have to look up a bit and you miss them when they're laying on the floor (only one scene that I remember of) but I'd say it's pretty great.
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Post by g3 on Sept 18, 2024 20:54:36 GMT
What a shame. Last time I saw this I was eighteen, and it starred Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson (whom I adored). I remember it being funny - perhaps unintentionally and often unnecessarily so - but it had a proper energy.
Tonight this was flat. Very flat. And it wasn't just me, I stood outside at the interval and watched a lot of people walk. The ones I spoke to felt the same.
Staging is great. Certain moments sing, but they just highlight the general banality of the piece. Maybe this is how Beckett is meant to be played.
Personally gutted (but on the other hand glad. I now know that I no longer need to spend oodles to take the family to see it!)
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Post by Steve on Sept 18, 2024 23:30:10 GMT
Saw this tonight, and thought it was great. It's nowhere near as funny as the 2009 version at this theatre, but I recall Michael Billington (unlike me, I loved the comedy of it lol) being annoyed by all the laughs in that one, and wanting a more poetic bleak version. This is that more poetic bleak version, in my opinion. Some spoilers follow. . . This play is about two characters in a bleak landscape, passing the time, waiting for Godot (whose name sounds like "God,") who may or may not be a no show. In 2009, Ian McKellen's manic impish physical comedy was off the wall funny as he played Estragon like some kind of base Shakespearian fool to Patrick Stewart's benign thoughtful Kingly Vladimir. Here, Lucian Msamati's Estragon is still base and physical and Ben Whishaw's Vladimir is still benign and thoughtful, but now it is Whishaw's Vladimir who feels like the (wise and wispy) fool to Msamati's (dominant, desperate and dimwitted) Kingly Estragon. Whishaw is ever affectionately at Msamati's side, submissively stroking his depressed flailing pal into speech and action. The pair are immensely endearing in their interactions, in the push and pull of keeping each other going, but are not particularly funny. This is a conscious choice on the part of the director, who is evidently aiming for poetic and bleak. Msamati is a supremely capable physical comedian, and gave one of my favourite comedy performances in "The Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes" at the Tricycle Theatre, so the choice of having him be ever on the verge of being defeated by time (where McKellen felt ever on the verge of defeating time) is deliberate. The comedy in this piece is instead provided by the other pairing of Jonathan Slinger and Tom Edden, who are very funny indeed when they do show up in their master/slave type relationship. Slinger's Pozzo is less the puffed up Lord that Simon Callow made of him, more a narcissistic business-like wannabe impresario, and Slinger milks laugh after laugh from the character's eagerness for and delight in attaining any form of attention. Tom Edden, the remarkable physical comedian who got the most laughs out of his doddering old man in "One Man Two Guvnors" here is again utterly remarkable as the seemingly contented slavish Lucky, whose frozen bug-eyed drooling visage (he doesn't seem to even bother to swallow his spit because his master hasn't told him to lol) is so compelling you can't look away. I think the strategy of having the main characters played as essentially bamboozled and sad, but besieged by comic situations, works well as a metaphor for life. This is a show the BBC would be happy to show at Christmas, because, like the Christmas EastEnders episode, it doesn't depict other people's lives as hunky dory and it offers people living lives of lonely desperation a kinship in the suffering of the main characters. This show is like a sad "Groundhog Day," in that only one character, Ben Whishaw's Vladimir, is completely conscious of just how repetitive life is from moment to moment, and day to day, and this realisation escalates his loneliness. Ben Whishaw's pivotal take on this lonely knowing man, this affectionate fool to his only friend, I found deeply moving. Yes, this version is flatter than the more zany 2009 Haymarket version, and flatter also than the Australian Hugo Weaving version that played more recently at the Barbican, but then, life can be pretty flat for all of us at times, especially if we think too much about it, and this version is willing to hold our hand in the poetic bleak times. 4 and a half stars from me. PS: The running time was 2 and three quarter hours, including one interval.
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Post by nash16 on Sept 19, 2024 23:08:22 GMT
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Post by Steve on Sept 20, 2024 0:10:09 GMT
I agreed with Arifa that Pozzo and Lucky are funny.
With regards to the main duo, she writes: "They are more bewildered and bereft in the first act. . . It gets more overtly clownish in the second act, with more physical comedy and even a Laurel and Hardy-style hat-swapping routine. Between them, Vladimir and Estragon begin to look like hobos impersonating a musical hall duo."
Her comment about "overt clownishness," which she suggests with her word "even" peaks in the "hat-swapping routine" is NOT a comment on THIS production though, but EVERY production because the text demands that hat-swapping routine to a very high degree of specificity:
{Spoiler - click to view} "Estragon takes Vladimir's hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Estragon puts on Vladimir's hat in place of his own which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Estragon's hat. Estragon adjusts Vladimir's hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Estragon's hat in place of Lucky's which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Lucky's hat. Vladimir adjusts Estragon's hat on his head. Estragon puts on Lucky's hat in place of Vladimir's which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes his hat, Estragon adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Vladimir puts on his hat in place of Estragon's which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes his hat. Vladimir adjusts his hat on his head. Estragon puts on his hat in place of Lucky's which he hands to Vladimir. Vladimir takes Lucky's hat. Estragon adjusts his hat on his head. Vladimir puts on Lucky's hat in place of his own which he hands to Estragon. Estragon takes Vladimir's hat. Vladimir adjusts Lucky's hat on his head. Estragon hands Vladimir's hat back to Vladimir who takes it and hands it back to Estragon who takes it and hands it back to Vladimir who takes it and throws it down."
Perhaps she is suggesting that Beckett, of all people, is simply not bleak enough for her period lol. :0
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Post by aspieandy on Sept 20, 2024 6:47:49 GMT
ffs, that's like taking issue with Guyev describing a tricky billiards shot.
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Post by fclou on Sept 20, 2024 8:54:19 GMT
went to this last night - had the very unfortunate issue of my arse being too large for the Upper circle seats... ended up having to move to the benches behind int eh gallery (helpful staff) very embarrassing... I have never had this issue before - even in upper circles other theatres. Last time I was at TRH we were in stalls and that was fine.,
Anyway we ended up leaving at the interval which is another thing that never happens... was with my son and we were uncomfortable and didnt find it engaging enough to distract us from the numb bum. Son was falling asleep and so we decided to cut our losses and leave - a real shame...
I think if we'd been more comfortable or if it had grabbed our attention better we'd have stayed. it was all perfectly good but not enough - the humour was good and I would have liked to see the second half but not enough to bribe son to stay. I liked the set though.
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