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Cursed Child failure
Tried to book seats for "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" when the new batch of performances went on sale this morning. I got the onscreen countdown all right... but by the time the computer actually displayed the 'Book here' boxes, I was already number 20,145 in the queue. Seven thousand people got seats -- or at least, there were still thirteen thousand in the queue when the 'Sold Out' sign went up.
It's just not worth it. No performance can survive that sort of gold-fever rush a year in advance -- even if it's a good show, it can't be as good as all that. And no live performance that I've been to has lived up to the stress and price tag of getting seats, however cult (or otherwise) the show and good the reviews. Not "Flight Path", or "Mack & Mabel", or ENO's "Tosca", or "Les Misérables", or "The Phantom of the Opera"; I remember only a handful of theatrical productions that have ever worked magic for me, and one of those was "Bitter Sweet" at the local theatre when I was too young to be sophisticated. (The "Opera Up Close" productions, using small venues and English-language libretti to bring famous operas back to life, were the most effective that I can remember of late -- but their most recent ventures seem to constitute an attempt to 'fix' the perceived ideological flaws of the originals instead of merely restaging them, which puts my back up.)
So I don't think it's 'sour grapes'. I wasn't terribly keen on the idea of launching into this cut-throat clicking competition in the first place (and I wouldn't have been any happier about the idea of hanging endlessly on the telephone trying to get through to the Box Office, for that matter). I don't particularly enjoy spending large amounts of money on anything, because in my experience it has never, ever, been worth it, whether on ordering much-awaited books or a once-in-a-lifetime tall ship voyage -- the things that give pleasure are often the completely free ones, and the things that cost money and are hard to get come with an unpayable debt burden of anticipation to fulfil.
I can just imagine booking tickets, waiting a year, and then sitting through your two performances thinking 'well, was that it?'
So I may as well read the script now and find out what happens, since it doesn't look as if I'm likely to see the actual plays any time in the foreseeable future...
It's just not worth it. No performance can survive that sort of gold-fever rush a year in advance -- even if it's a good show, it can't be as good as all that. And no live performance that I've been to has lived up to the stress and price tag of getting seats, however cult (or otherwise) the show and good the reviews. Not "Flight Path", or "Mack & Mabel", or ENO's "Tosca", or "Les Misérables", or "The Phantom of the Opera"; I remember only a handful of theatrical productions that have ever worked magic for me, and one of those was "Bitter Sweet" at the local theatre when I was too young to be sophisticated. (The "Opera Up Close" productions, using small venues and English-language libretti to bring famous operas back to life, were the most effective that I can remember of late -- but their most recent ventures seem to constitute an attempt to 'fix' the perceived ideological flaws of the originals instead of merely restaging them, which puts my back up.)
So I don't think it's 'sour grapes'. I wasn't terribly keen on the idea of launching into this cut-throat clicking competition in the first place (and I wouldn't have been any happier about the idea of hanging endlessly on the telephone trying to get through to the Box Office, for that matter). I don't particularly enjoy spending large amounts of money on anything, because in my experience it has never, ever, been worth it, whether on ordering much-awaited books or a once-in-a-lifetime tall ship voyage -- the things that give pleasure are often the completely free ones, and the things that cost money and are hard to get come with an unpayable debt burden of anticipation to fulfil.
I can just imagine booking tickets, waiting a year, and then sitting through your two performances thinking 'well, was that it?'
So I may as well read the script now and find out what happens, since it doesn't look as if I'm likely to see the actual plays any time in the foreseeable future...
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