the list of now

Tickets for the Fall run of Equus on Broadway are now on sale. You can get them here at Telecharge and these are the costs:

Detailed Pricing Information Orchestra: $116.50
Mezzanine (Rows A-H): $116.50
Mezzanine (Rows J-L): $66.50

Wednesday matinee: Orchestra: $111.50
Mezzanine (Rows A-H): $111.50
Mezzanine (Rows J-L): $61.50

Premium Seat Prices: $251.50

Saturday evening: $301.50

Wednesday matinee: $151.50

All prices include a $1.50 facility fee.

Tickets purchased online and by phone are subject to a per ticket service charge of $7.00 and a per order handling fee. Handling fees vary by how your tickets are delivered.

Don’t those prices just make you want to vomit? Seriously.

I highly HIGHLY recommend the play. I saw it in London and it was wonderful. It well exceeds and overpowers all the hype about D-Rad’s privates. It’s simply a fantastically produced, directed and performed production.

However… and this is a big however… wtf Broadway? I had a frenzied love affair with Broadway in my youth and I’m eternally grateful for having had the chance to attend many, many amazing productions and often with their original casts. Now, thinking about the state of Broadway and the American mainstream theatre world makes my heart and my head hurt. Between the jukebox musicals, the movie-theatre transfusions that often don’t work and the completely out-of-control greedy, elitist pricing bullshit… I don’t really know how to care about what happens there anymore.

Theatre has an important place in our culture and I want more people to be brought there and entertained and engaged. It definitely exists in America and I still believe in it. I just won’t be sending anyone to Broadway to find it anymore. Not often anyway.

Equus is worth it, if you are lucky enough to be able to afford to go. I would love to see it again, but probably won’t because of money.

Oh and when I was in London? I saw it for 15£. Apparently on the West End of London, they still believe theatre should be… whats the word… accessible? You know. An important part of culture that shouldn’t be reserved for the extremely wealthy? Even with the crappy exchange rate (about double), our tickets were still only $30 American. When you include the fees, that’s about $40 cheaper than ANYTHING that is available in the Broadway pricing (even the REALLY “cheap seats”.) Not to mention that students, working artists and plain old not-remotely-rich-folks can afford a 15£ ticket over in the UK, but I don’t know many in NY that are going to be able to shell out $66 – $75 to see it from the back of the mezzanine. Nor should they have to.

In London, even with the exchange rate, I was able to see two West End shows in one day. For a total of 35£ and both shows featured well-known actors of stage and screen. For both, I walked up to the box offices on the day of the shows and purchased discounted tickets with no fees. For one of them, (not Equus) I was even in REALLY good orchestra seats and just happened to get old school “walk up at the right time and ask” rush tickets. Both performances were well acted, directed and no one was wearing body microphones. The actors projected their voices and theaters were built for good acoustics. The audiences were well-behaved, polite and engaged in the event of a good play.

The matinee that I saw was a Pinter play called The Dumbwaiter. It was a really really tight production at EVERY level. Just solidly amazing professional theater. The kind that inspires people to find a way to make a living working in theatre. When it was finished, the young women sitting next to me turned to me and very nonchalantly, but affirmatively said “Well. That was quite good.”

And it was.