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Post by musicalmarge on Mar 8, 2021 12:39:08 GMT
One concern with Birmingham is -
A The are not many international tourists like London (millions visit the West End every year).
B The socio-economic demographic of local population of Birmingham. Do people have money for a family to see Starlight?!
C Southerner’s by large (sorry here but it’s true) do not travel to Birmingham. Theatre loving fabulous folk like us don’t count.
D Birmingham is a ethnically and culturally diverse city.... and sadly audience members do not match the percentages of the city. In other words will the theatre be full every night? Full from what demographic? From where?
These issues will no doubt bring up many debatable political and social questions - but nevertheless VITAL for knowing if they CAN sit 1000 people every night in a theatre with everyone paying 70 quid a ticket.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2021 12:58:34 GMT
One concern with Birmingham is - ... C Southerner’s by large (sorry here but it’s true) do not travel to Birmingham. Theatre loving fabulous folk like us don’t count. Not to mention the fact that although there used to be a good late-night train service south from Birmingham New Street on a Saturday night it now involves an eight-hour wait in Northampton. |
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Post by Dawnstar on Mar 8, 2021 13:10:49 GMT
One concern with Birmingham is - ... C Southerner’s by large (sorry here but it’s true) do not travel to Birmingham. Theatre loving fabulous folk like us don’t count. Not to mention the fact that although there used to be a good late-night train service south from Birmingham New Street on a Saturday night it now involves an eight-hour wait in Northampton. I think the last direct train from Birmingham to London leaves, or at least used to leave, at about 9.30pm on a Saturday night. A few years ago I remember legging it out of Symphony Hall at the end of a CBSO concert performance that finished about 9.15pm and just catching the last train that would get me home that night. (I had to go via London as the last direct train to Cambridge left before 9pm.) I've not seen Starlight Express but I presume it runs about the standard 2h30-2h45 that most musicals do, so would end too late to catch the last London train. I think the trains run later on weekdays but how many people would want to travel from London to Birmingham for an evening of theatre on a weeknight? |
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Post by TallPaul on Mar 8, 2021 13:41:10 GMT
Bochum is the German version of Newport. Actually, Bochum is the German version of Sheffield. We've been twinned since 1950, when BurlyBeaR were nowt but a cub. There's a bell, and everything! 🙂 |
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Post by FrontroverPaul on Mar 8, 2021 13:43:22 GMT
It's possible to get FROM London after a show to much of the UK by train or coach but travelling TO London or beyond is another matter. The service reflects the much smaller demand of course and late night London-bound trains are very quiet.
The schedule I would suggest if Starlight Express were to happenin the West midlands would be something like Saturday 2.30 and 7.30, Sunday 1.00 and 6.00, Tuesday 6.00, Wednesday-Friday 7.30. That would allow journeys by public transport for at least 50% of performances from most major cities. A dedicated bus link from venue both to the city centre and to Birmingham International/Airport/NEC would be essential together with ample on-site free parking.
Every year a UK venue in a rural location puts on a show which sells all 1500 seats for all 100 performances with no nearby rail station or bus route whatsoever so it can be done (guess where ?)
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Post by oxfordsimon on Mar 8, 2021 13:58:27 GMT
What is the obsession with Londoners being such an important part of the potential audience for this project?
Is it that hard to believe that there is life outside of the M25?
Those from London who want to see it using the train as their transport option can attend a matinee very easily.
But the producers don't have to go to extraordinary lengths to cater to London based audiences. There are plenty of others who can make it to Brum.
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Post by Phantom of London on Mar 8, 2021 14:00:36 GMT
I was at the Other Palace production where Andrew Lloyd Webber took to the stage and vowed that a new production will open next year and he had found his Pearl. Carrie will be busy with Cinderella for a while though won't she?  It wasn’t Carrie, it was an actual actress. |
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Mar 8, 2021 14:04:23 GMT
Bochum is the German version of Newport. Actually, Bochum is the German version of Sheffield. We've been twinned since 1950, when BurlyBeaR were nowt but a cub. There's a bell, and everything! 🙂 Oh my, the number of times I drove up and down Bochum Parkway to and from Chesterfield back in the day (for the usual reasons!) |
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Post by theatrecatlady on Mar 8, 2021 14:04:28 GMT
Every year a UK venue in a rural location puts on a show which sells all 1500 seats for all 100 performances with no nearby rail station or bus route whatsoever so it can be done (guess where ?) Easy! Thursford in Norfolk! And agree that for the right show, in the right location people will travel as has been shown by Starlight in Bochum. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2021 14:16:40 GMT
What is the obsession with Londoners being such an important part of the potential audience for this project? I don't think it's so much Londoners as Outside-Birminghamers. There's not really any good late-night public transport from Birmingham to anywhere more than a short distance away so, matinees aside, it would be a strictly Birmingham-only affair. |
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Post by viserys on Mar 8, 2021 15:00:43 GMT
What is the obsession with Londoners being such an important part of the potential audience for this project? I don't think it's so much Londoners as Outside-Birminghamers. There's not really any good late-night public transport from Birmingham to anywhere more than a short distance away so, matinees aside, it would be a strictly Birmingham-only affair. Like cars don't exist in Britain? |
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Post by Dawnstar on Mar 8, 2021 16:30:00 GMT
What is the obsession with Londoners being such an important part of the potential audience for this project? I don't think it's so much Londoners as Outside-Birminghamers. There's not really any good late-night public transport from Birmingham to anywhere more than a short distance away so, matinees aside, it would be a strictly Birmingham-only affair. Yes. I've been complaining about Cambridge to Birmingham being a pain to do, since that's where I happen to live. I am sure there are many other people living in places-that-are-neither-Birmingham-nor-London who would likewise have long journeys to get to Birmingham. Like cars don't exist in Britain? I don't own a car but if I did I really do not think I'd want to drive it into the centre of Birmingham, as the road system looks ghastly! |
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Post by alece10 on Mar 8, 2021 16:47:03 GMT
Every year a UK venue in a rural location puts on a show which sells all 1500 seats for all 100 performances with no nearby rail station or bus route whatsoever so it can be done (guess where ?) Easy! Thursford in Norfolk! And agree that for the right show, in the right location people will travel as has been shown by Starlight in Bochum. Isn't it mostly coach parties who go there for the Christmas show rather than people driving there? Its something I'd love to do one day as the shows look amazing. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2021 17:18:22 GMT
News flash - there is life outside London! A few random thoughts:
- They have wanted to bring Starlight back for a while. Doing it on any kind of scale requires innovation and a not insignificant investment. West End revivals of all the mega musicals have shown (sadly) that their audience in London is limited. They also for whatever reason (Miss Saigon, Cats, Evita) did not attract as large a tourist audience as the new shows. The cost of doing this in London vs the audience it might sustain is therefore prohibitive.
- These shows do do incredibly well on tour though and the domestic demand for 80s/90s revivals is very strong. Starlight toured with four different casts post London and sold very well.
- Nowhere in the UK is easy for the entire UK to get to, but Birmingham is pretty central. It's also the 2nd city so has a vast local pool of potential punters. We have a poor track record in the UK of travelling for theatre (other than to London as things have always been so London centric) so they are probably not imagining lots of people travelling extensive distances. They would have picked a large regional city deliberately. Also for those that would travel, the NEC has a train station and an airport close by. It's about as good as it gets. Sadly everywhere in the UK is hard to get to by train if it doesn't involve London. For road, it is right by the motorway.
- I think we can be pretty certain that although it is to be custom built, it very much won't be a bricks and mortar permanent building like in Bochum. We live in a totally different time and I don't think anyone imagines Starlight here (or any ALW show in 2021) would have the demand that would justify that.
- Rather will most likely be a semi permanent structure that you can erect and dismantle; much like the Troubadour theatres or the Cats 'tent' that toured Europe. So they could keep it in Birmingham as long as demand was there then move it to another dense urban area. The one that springs to mind would be somewhere like Warrington which is in-between Manchester and Liverpool, our 3rd and 4th cities. I am sure people in the North West would happily drive an hour. It is no coincidence that the UK's first Ikea outside London was in Warrington! Then between Glasgow and Edinburgh for example. In fact going back to the North West, it is not unlike the Ruhr - Bochum is a small town but in a very densely populated area of Germany with Dusseldorf, Cologne, Essen and Dortmund all in driving distance.
- If they get their skates on (pun very much intended) this could really do well in a domestic environment while we are waiting for tourism to pick up.
Lastly, sad to say I'd be very surprised to see it happen so this is all probably academic. I remain as ever truly hopeful however :-)
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Post by Someone in a tree on Mar 8, 2021 17:32:48 GMT
In high school we travelled down from Yorkshire to the RSC in Stratford by coach for a show. Lots of my friends from other parts of the country also did similar trips
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Post by danb on Mar 8, 2021 17:40:19 GMT
Carrie will be busy with Cinderella for a while though won't she? It wasn’t Carrie, it was an actual actress. It was Christina Bennington wasn’t it? |
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Post by viserys on Mar 8, 2021 17:41:33 GMT
I don't own a car but if I did I really do not think I'd want to drive it into the centre of Birmingham, as the road system looks ghastly! Yes, I understand that, but from what I can tell, the whole point of this new thing is to plonk it by the NEC near the motorway, thus make it easily accessible by car without having to drive into a chaotic city. @sharpe12 makes a good point about the revivals of earlier massive hits like Cats and Miss Saigon not doing well - tourists are clearly not interested in them anymore. It would be the same for Starlight Express presumably. Although it doesn't really compute with the on-going success of Phantom and Les Mis... but let's solve that mystery another time. At the same time a "normal" tour of Starlight Express in regular theatres can't ever recreate the atmosphere and bombast of the original. So it makes perfect sense to create something mobile to play a certain area for 6-12 months or however long demand lasts, then move on. |
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Post by viserys on Mar 8, 2021 17:43:49 GMT
It wasn’t Carrie, it was an actual actress. It was Christina Bennington wasn’t it? Christina did the workshop, yes. Though I remember that the name Hollie Aires was bandied about a lot and then it turned out she was "just" joining the Bochum production as Pearl... So I think that was meant. Although I totally wouldn't mind Christina becoming Pearl, especially if she brings the boyfriend along as Rusty... |
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Post by theatreian on Mar 8, 2021 17:46:40 GMT
I don't think Birmingham is the best place for this really. I was trying to get some figures on theatre attendance and came across this article admittedly from 2016 but still relevant. it gave the average age for theatre attendance as 52 and the most common age 65-74. Birmingham is a young city, I live just outside and I don't think it has the population itself to support this sadly. The article is here:
Theatre risks failing to replenish its ageing audiences with a new generation because young people are looking to other art forms, research has claimed.
This is the claim of new research from the Audience Agency, which includes data from more than 500 venues and 10.6 million households. It suggested that the average age of theatre audiences will increase over the next decade.
An estimated 40% of English households attend the theatre, but just 15% see two or more shows a year, the Audience Agency said. The data added that theatre came lowest on the list of cultural activities people would recommend to their friends.
The data found that the largest age group for theatre audiences was people between the ages of 65 and 74, with the average age of an audience member being 52.
It suggested that the average age is set to increase “considerably” over the next 10 years if the profile of theatregoers remains the same and organisations do not reach out to different audiences.
Audience Agency chief executive Anne Torreggiani said that while the average age of theatregoers was increasing, audiences were not being replenished with young people, who over the next decade could instead look to other art forms.
“Our data suggests that younger audiences tend to prefer other art forms, so they are perhaps engaging more with other performing art forms, more contemporary art possibly, and museums are doing well with those groups,” she told The Stage.
Through the Audience Agency’s Audience Finder tool, which splits the population into groups linked to their household and postcode, it has been identified that the three groups engaging most highly with the arts represent 60% of theatre audiences, but just 22% of the population.
The Audience Agency claimed that these top three theatregoing groups were set to age at a faster rate than the population over the next 10 years.
Torreggiani went on to say: “By 2026, if we’re not careful, we could be feeling really confident because we’ll see an increase with the frequency in which people are coming to the theatre, we’ll probably see an increase in how much some people are willing to pay for it, but it also looks as though our audience will be getting older and not necessarily being replenished.
“There’s a danger that theatre audiences could look very healthy in 2026 without us noticing that we are increasingly failing to engage that younger audience, who are engaging with culture in a different way at the moment.”
The data was originally presented at industry conference Theatre 2016.
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Post by FrontroverPaul on Mar 8, 2021 18:37:41 GMT
Easy! Thursford in Norfolk! And agree that for the right show, in the right location people will travel as has been shown by Starlight in Bochum. Isn't it mostly coach parties who go there for the Christmas show rather than people driving there? Its something I'd love to do one day as the shows look amazing. We go every year by car. Always same front row seats too. I book the moment it goes on sale to ensure we get them ! It is an incredible production in every respect, cannot recommend it highly enough. I'd say that coach parties comprise about half the audience for matinees and a quarter or so for evening performances |
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Post by FairyGodmother on Mar 8, 2021 18:42:06 GMT
I don't think they always help themselves though.
I was at university in Edinburgh, where the Festival and King's Theatres did an absolutely fantastic student deal — £10 ticket, any seat (although I think they did start to restrict it to stalls or gallery only later on) as long as you bought after 12 pm on the day of the performance with a valid student card. I saw some fantastic productions doing that, especially ones that I wasn't sure enough I'd like to pay full price for.
I never saw it advertised (other than tiny print in the brochure, and then it wasn't really clear unless you knew about it). It was generally passed on by word of mouth.
I understand they don't want to sell all their seats cheaply to students, but on the other hand, how many at full price will you sell that afternoon? I asked so many people if they wanted to come to shows and they said "won't it be very expensive?", and then they happily agreed to come for £10. Tbh, I bet £15 would still have been fine.
It meant that when I did have to pay full price (Cameron Mackintosh mainly, or if I wanted to go to something at The Playhouse) I didn't mind paying more, because it still averaged out at a reasonable amount (for an impoverished student) per show. I also really got the bug for going, so now I'm a friend of my local theatre and do buy the expensive seats. (And I sponsor a bee on the Festival Theatre roof, despite not living there!)
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Post by Dawnstar on Mar 8, 2021 21:29:02 GMT
I don't own a car but if I did I really do not think I'd want to drive it into the centre of Birmingham, as the road system looks ghastly! Yes, I understand that, but from what I can tell, the whole point of this new thing is to plonk it by the NEC near the motorway, thus make it easily accessible by car without having to drive into a chaotic city. The only time I visited the NEC I was about 7 so I can't say I remember the road system around there. (And it would be worse to get to by train than central Birmingham for me.) |
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Post by danb on Mar 8, 2021 22:42:31 GMT
Its a couple of stops from New St to get to Birmingham Int so easily do able.
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Post by robbobtr on Mar 10, 2021 20:17:34 GMT
Birmingham is the host city of the 2022 Commonwealth Games so perhaps this was a factor in the decision to put the show on there? Yes the games may only be for a few weeks next summer but it all adds to Birmingham's cultural profile and there is a lot of redevelopment going on there at the moment.
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