Theatre Market

Question for Short Debate

Asked by

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the operation of the theatre market in (1) London, and (2) elsewhere in the United Kingdom; and what steps they are taking to ensure that theatre is accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

My Lords, several of the Liberal Democrats think it is high time we had a debate on the state of British theatre, particularly the London theatre, which attracts millions of tourists from all over the world. London is now generally accepted as being the theatrical mecca of the English-speaking world.

I will start with the good news. London theatre is booming. In fact, some say it has never been in a healthier state. Theatres are not going dark any more, smaller theatre venues are opening all over the city and many of the popular shows, some of which have been running for more than 30 years, are still sold out every night, and certainly at weekends. More and more actors and performers are being presented with their opportunity to shine. If you still do not know who the murderer in “The Mousetrap” is, you have another year or so to find out. That is the good news.

Now I will turn to the bad news, which is what concerns many of us. Ticket prices have been rising sharply, considerably more than inflation, and are still rising. I am talking mainly about the prices for relatively good seats. It is getting more and more difficult for the average British theatregoer to afford an evening in the West End, and almost impossible if he or she hopes to bring the family.

In his speech at the Olivier Awards earlier this year, Kenny Wax, the chairman of SOLT—the Society of London Theatre—praised the London theatre’s successes, then added that the theatre should not be for only “those with means”. He said that, in his opinion, we need to,

“take a good, hard look at ticket pricing across the West End … We cannot get away from the fact that the average cost of a top-price ticket has risen steeply in the past few years”.

In an unconvincing attempt to justify these excessive prices, some theatre owners argue that it is only the top prices that have gone up. The cheaper and average-priced seats, they say, have risen only in line with inflation. In fact, the so-called high-priced seats now constitute half the seats in the theatre: the ones where you have a chance of seeing all the action and hearing all the lines—in fact, the ones most of us want to sit in. No doubt if you are prepared to sit in the back row of the stalls behind a pillar, you might find that this year will be no more expensive than last year.

As regular theatregoers among your Lordships will have noticed, the cost of theatre seats has risen dramatically. Since the musical “Hamilton” arrived in London from New York two years ago, the cost of a seat for a musical has made a huge jump. In 2015, no theatrical production, not even the most extravagant musical, would cost more than £100 for a good seat. Now the average price is about £150 and most cost more than that. The only justification for these prices is that there are still people prepared to pay them, mostly tourists who do not know any better. To be fair to the theatre owners, many provide discounted tickets for certain shows on certain days and you can usually get a cheaper seat if you arrive on the night and queue up. But, for a number of reasons, that may not suit all of us.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, on securing this debate. I have no doubt that some commentators on the House of Lords will regard this subject as rather ephemeral and elitist, but I see it as critical to the kind of country we want to be once we have managed to put Brexit behind us.

I have long been concerned about how to support the arts in this country. In my maiden speech in February 2011, in a debate on the arts introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, who is one of the most formidable advocates for the arts in your Lordships’ House from whom we shall hear in a moment, I said that we were,

“very privileged in this country to have access to a world-class arts scene: theatre, opera, dance, music, museums, galleries and much more”.—

I referred to these as,

“a national treasure to be protected and nourished”,

and urged that we find new sources of funding for the arts, as reliance on the public purse was no longer sustainable. I also argued that increased funding was not the whole answer. We had to do more. In particular, I said that,

“the most important thing that we can do to support the arts … is to encourage young people to develop a love for the arts and, where appropriate, to help them develop any latent artistic talents they may have”.—[Official Report, 3/2/11; col.1527.]

I made this statement over eight years ago, but I still believe it to be true.

I also still believe that the best way of helping young people to develop these talents is to expose them to those who have already developed these skills to the very highest levels. Fortunately, such world-class stars live and work in our country. The trouble is that, once they become world-class stars, the economics of show business means that only a very limited proportion of our population can afford to see them, as the noble Earl pointed out—although in recent years live streaming has made a big difference.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for introducing this debate and setting out his arguments so forcefully. I am going to take a wider view of what access might mean for theatre. We continue to have, in this country, a remarkably successful and lauded theatre. It is interesting that, at present, much of it touches closely on political and state-of-the-nation concerns. Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman”, which I was lucky enough to see the year before last, has just won four Tony awards, with the Almeida production of James Graham’s “Ink” winning two. However, going to the theatre, particularly in the West End, can cost an arm and a leg in a way that it used not to.

That is, in itself, something of a political point. The theatre has not always been expensive. I would certainly go with my family more if this was not so. Broadway is even more expensive than the West End and, in my research for this debate, I read an argument that the West End would be more expensive still if the prices were not held back, to an extent, through comparison with a cheaper subsidised theatre. This may be so, as long as that structure is in place. There is the problem, however, that reality becomes also the long-term perception. As director Jamie Lloyd said in an interview reported in the Daily Telegraph in 2016:

“Producers and companies who let prices spiral out of control send out a message that theatre is a luxury experience, which is deeply problematic”.

He goes on to say that,

“we are creating a divide in the audience between the rich and the poor ... You cannot let your ticket prices soar to an astronomical place just because people will pay for them. People will pay for them, but that does not mean it is right.”

Some theatre directors, including Jamie Lloyd, have addressed the theatre price hikes by offering substantially cheaper seats. Michael Grandage was in the forefront of this when, in 2012, he offered a quarter of the seats available each night for his productions at the Noel Coward Theatre for £10, at least to encourage young people less well off than those able to afford the standard tickets. As it happens, tomorrow afternoon in Portcullis House Michael Grandage will be addressing the Performers’ Alliance All-Party Parliamentary Group on this very subject, about which he feels strongly. Noble Lords who would like to continue this debate, please attend. According to figures from the Society of London Theatres, an average of 77.5% of available seats in London theatres were sold in 2018 —many of them to tourists. I imagine it is difficult for the Government to see this as anything other than a great financial success and a success for the tourist industry.

My Lords, even though the Arts Council analysis of theatre in England reveals how the Midlands is underserved in theatre, I speak from a diocese that has international, national, regional and local treasures, and from a city that will be the UK’s City of Culture in 2021. The million or so people of Coventry and Warwickshire are rich in creativity and are reaching out for the sort of accessibility that is the intention of the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, whom I thank for securing this important debate and for his wide-ranging introductory speech. I am very glad to speak in this debate, not least because I am the only speaker in costume today—fittingly dressed.

There is much I would like to say about our most renowned local theatre, the RSC in Stratford, but I will simply note its work among young people. It has an impressive accessibility scheme, to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman. It works with young people across the UK in their own schools and local theatres, often in the sort of contexts where people would look on Shakespeare and theatre as belonging to a very alien world, bringing rehearsal techniques into their classrooms, listening to their reaction to Shakespeare’s abiding themes, and enabling them to see that these are their texts for their lives, and that this is a world to which they belong and through which they can interpret their world. I am told that it has engaged 1,000 schools and 600,000 children and young people over the past year. The test for the theatre market in all its forms is whether it will allow people the right of access to performance across the country that belongs to them.

I will focus on Coventry itself. I am honoured to follow the powerful speech of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, on regionalisation. We are not a rich city: privilege is rare. We are a religiously, racially and culturally diverse city. We are a city with a young population, a creative city not only in industry and invention but in music, literature and drama. Our wartime experience shaped us for peace, reconciliation and sanctuary, yet our social inequalities and injustices are similar to those of other cities: ill health, physical and mental, poor diet, low aspiration, stubborn and deep pockets of poverty, homelessness, youth violence and the like.

All of those strengths and challenges were taken into our bid to be the UK’s City of Culture and, harnessed well by the energy of the city, were the cause of its award. Our main but by no means only theatre, the Belgrade, was built in the post-war reconstruction of Coventry: heady with ideals of democracy, accessibility and risk-taking creativity that marked those days. Over the years, to its credit, it has kept faith with that vision, expressed not so much in great art and culture for everyone but in great art and culture by, with and for everyone. It seeks to test that aspiration empirically. I should be very interested in the noble Viscount’s assessment of the Belgrade’s work with local universities to develop research frameworks that quantify impacts on inclusion and engagement, and the potential of such evidence-based approaches to support strategic interventions to increase accessibility.

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry. We all wish Coventry well as the next City of Culture. We have seen what an impact that has had on places such as Glasgow, Liverpool and Hull; I am sure that Coventry will prove just as exciting.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, indicated, there is always a danger of this debate being seen as a grumpy old Earl and his chums complaining that they cannot get the best seats. However, the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry disprove that motive. Nothing could be further from the truth concerning my noble friend Lord Glasgow: he is never grumpy and, as he explained in opening the debate, his motives for mounting this campaign are far wider and more fundamental than getting a decent seat for himself. I congratulate him on securing the debate and on the spirit in which he introduced it.

For hundreds of years, the theatre has been at the heart of our cultural, social and political life. Quotes from plays and songs enrich our language. Our playwrights, particularly Shakespeare, have given voice to our sense of national identity. Plays have often captured the spirit of an age or more fundamental changes in society; John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” is an example of that. So it would be a matter of real concern if access to the best of our theatre were to be fenced off from the general public by high ticket prices so that it became available only to the very rich from home or abroad.

We will hear lots of figures bandied about implying that the problem does not really exist, but there are two indications that it does. First, five years ago, the New York Times wrote about the combination of superb quality and low prices that made London theatre such a bargain compared with Broadway. I do not think that such an article would be written today; my noble friend Lord Glasgow quoted some relevant figures. Secondly, in preparation for the debate, we received briefings setting out a cascade of initiatives listing ways to make tickets available to wider groups in society—a sign that the industry itself is aware of its vulnerability to charges of elitism and profiteering.

I am not wearing a costume, I am terribly sorry, but I must say that London theatre has very much been part of my life. I cannot imagine living without access to good theatre. I did not like amateur theatre, and some of my friends who were very keen on it were quite put off by my saying that I prefer professional theatre—and I do.

My husband was diagnosed with MS in 1983. By the time he died, just under two years ago, he was very disabled. He could not do anything for himself, and towards the end of his life, he had to be fed. But his brain kept on working, and he kept on working until he was about 75, which was extremely good for him. If you can work and use your skills in some way, it keeps you going. I think that is why he managed to live for as long as he did.

I feel extremely sad about how difficult it is for disabled people to get to most theatres. Some theatres have space for wheelchairs in certain rows, but they are never the best seats, where you can see and hear well, and more than any of us disabled people need to be able to see and hear well. Taking my husband to the theatre was a big event. I had to work out everything: how we were going to get there, how long beforehand we had to get there and how we were going to get in. Others do not have to do that; if you want to go to the theatre, all you need to do is get tickets. But for a disabled person, it is an event. It is very sad when not enough attention is paid to where a disabled person is going to have to sit.

Just recently, I saw “The Lehman Trilogy”—the best of the best. If any of your Lordships have not seen it, I recommend that they do. It is fantastic: the acting is fantastic and the set, though very simple, is fantastic. There are just three actors, but it is amazing theatre. It is the best of the London stage. But my husband could not have gone to Piccadilly Theatre: there are so many stairs to go up and come down that it is impossible for a disabled person to go there. There is no lift and no way of getting a disabled person in. It is a beautiful Victorian theatre, but with no access for disabled people. My little moan is about access. There are so many shows that disabled people want to see, but they have to work out whether it is possible for them to go there.

I live very close to Theatre Royal Windsor, and it is very good. It has an area—sort of like a lower dress circle—with seats for disabled people. They do not have to deal with stairs, and the theatre will take out seats for you if you have a wheelchair. It is wonderful. We often used to go to the Theatre Royal, because it has a lot of shows that come from London, with some very good actors. It is wonderful that someone who is disabled can sit in a place where they are comfortable and can see everything. If we are talking about theatres elsewhere, I would like to say a good word for the Theatre Royal in Windsor. Because it is near London, a lot of London shows come for either a week or 10 days—it is not for very long, but for at least a week, and sometimes even two if a show is considered very popular. It is wonderful to be able to go to the Theatre Royal, but there are so many theatres with a lot of steps, and so you cannot take a disabled person there.

My Lords, follow that. It will not be easy. However, I hope that I have a couple of lines, which might cheer you up, on how one gets one’s husband up there.

I learned a great deal when I was Minister for Business and Intellectual Property. I thought it was going to be stiff and difficult but the intellectual property part proved to be marvellous. I learned a great deal from the theatre and Equity and I was drawn to the House as I never had been before. Today I will speak for a couple of minutes. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for her terrific speech. It has got us all going, and here are my pet few words to encourage the theatre as much as I can.

The reason for the lack audiences for many years was that little of interest was being produced—I am happy to say that is now changing—and that attending theatres was not in the culture of certain areas. It is an uphill task promoting programmes of interest but, happily, more and more young ethnic people are getting together and becoming involved in theatre, both production and performing. It is wonderful to see that. The media has done a lot to help us here and we must encourage access wherever we can.

The fact that various surveys showed that the bulk of audiences were from a white, affluent public does not surprise me as the Arts Council has severely cut grants and managements have had to hike up ticket prices to cover the ever-soaring cost of productions. However, more cheerfully, our National Theatre and the Opera House both have a plan to provide low-priced tickets to students and people below a certain age. It is also possible, if one is prepared to be at the box office at 10 am, to purchase tickets that are only released on the day. However, this only helps a small minority of people, which is not good.

Most of the theatres I encounter now have facilities for disabled people, although the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, would not agree, and many managements will sell a registered disabled person two tickets for the price of one to enable them to bring a carer, which is at least a small gesture—by West End as well as provincial theatres—if they cannot get on a bit faster than that.

My Lords, I cannot promise that, but I will begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Glasgow not only on securing this debate but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, said, on getting us going. I congratulate other noble Lords on their contributions. They all highlighted the important role that theatres play in our cultural life. They give enormous enjoyment and benefit to individuals and also benefit society as a whole in ways ranging from improved health and social care outcomes to help with regeneration, as my noble friend Lord McNally and the in-costume right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry pointed out, and regional growth.

I have enjoyed some amazing productions, from “Hamilton” through to am-dram performances in venues such as the excellent Mission Theatre in Bath. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, that if she were to go to the Mission Theatre in Bath she would see some excellent acting and production. It does not all have to be done in the professional theatre.

As other noble Lords have said, there is much to celebrate. Audience figures are rising and more people are going to the theatre than watch football, but as all noble Lords have pointed out, more needs to be done to make theatres accessible to a wider audience. As we have heard, three years ago Arts Council figures showed that people with minority ethnic backgrounds and disabilities were underrepresented in theatre audiences while wealthier people were overrepresented. Three years on, quite a lot has happened and while, as the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, pointed out, more needs to be done, theatre renovations and new-build projects are beginning to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. Technological developments have made a big difference. The noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, pointed out the great benefits of cinema screenings of theatre productions, there has been help for people who are hard of hearing or visually impaired and there are techniques to build relationships with existing and potential audiences. Arts Council funding brings with it a requirement for outreach work which is also helping to build audiences. The Courtyard in Hereford, for example, works with 97% of Herefordshire schools and 77 care homes and has opened the first UK dementia-friendly arts centre. Even theatres without public subsidy are doing some exciting things. The Theatre Royal in Bath produces plays not only for its own stage but for other regional theatres, the West End and internationally, and the profits help fund the amazing egg, its dedicated theatre for children and families, and grants to local arts organisations.