Radiohead changed how we buy albums, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art changed how we visited exhibitions, but can Jez Butterworth’s first-come-first-served approach change how we think about tickets…?
In February I got an email from Nimax theatres, inviting me to book tickets for a new production of Twelfth Night. In November. Nine months later.
Now, I just about stumble through life from meal to meal. I don’t have a diary, I forget anything that isn’t written on my own face and my grip on what’s going on from week to week could best be described as limp. I’m about as likely to book a theatre ticket a full human gestation period before the performance as I am to remember your birthday.
Which is why the news that tickets to Jez Butterworth’s The River at The Royal Court are only available on a first-come-first-served basis, and released daily at nine o’clock in the morning, is more welcome than a hot thermos on a cold day. You see, last time I booked tickets to watch one of Big Jez’s shows I had to do it so far in advance that I forgot all about it. Instead of spending my evening watching Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook on stage in Jerusalem, I think I spent the evening cleaning my oven. Hell, who am I kidding – I haven’t cleaned an oven in my entire life – the most likely scenario is that I had two dinners and went to bed at 9pm.
But, is this model really any more democratic than the old book-now-hope-you-remember-it-later one? Does it simply make theatre yet more accessible to people with ready access to the internet or west London? Does it – at the risk of sounding like Norman Tebbit in pleather leggings – favour those without full-time jobs? Because, much as I love theatre, I’m not going to take a half day’s holiday in the hope that I might be able to queue for an hour and buy a ticket for that evening.
Well, even if it does, I can’t say I mind terribly much. If I’m honest, I think I want more young, casually employed, feckless scatterbrains like me to go to the theatre. I’d like the aisles to be heaving with people who’ve forgotten that they’re meant to be having dinner with their mum or going to Ikea to buy a new shower curtain. I like the idea that you make plans this morning and carry them out this evening.
I don’t want wealth to be the only thing to determine who gets to access culture. Oh sure, the tickets for The River still cost £20, which is probably twice as much as some people are willing to pay for a bit of old art, but it’s still cheaper than dinner at Pizza Express. Twin this with the Tricycle Theatre’s pay what you can scheme on Tuesday evenings and Saturday matinees, and we’d have ourselves a genuinely exciting, open theatre culture.
But maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m simply stuck up idiot creek without paddle.
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Illustration by Narcsville.
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