I was talking today to one of the organisers of Dedham Films. They are one of the many film clubs that have sprung up around the UK in recent years, and they are doing it in some style, in the elegant setting of Dedham's Assembly Rooms and with some very expensive, state of the art equipment. They have recently signed up with the National Theatre to screen live performances of the NT's own productions, and from various other top class venues. I have not yet been to a cinema projection of a stage play, but my Pilates teacher who saw Sir Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth on screen said that it was gripping, and less muddy and damp than being in the live audience. The downside to gaining National Theatre Screen rights is that clubs have to take the whole season as a package, and she was afraid that the audience for Medea on 4th September was going to consist of six people, tops. Would I like to go, she enquired hopefully. Perhaps I might. The last time I went to a Greek tragedy was well over twenty-five years ago, when a friend was left with a spare ticket for the Almeida, and I recall it being gory, but satisfying. On the other hand, I could go and see Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan in David Hare's Skylight. A premium ticket to see that in the theatre would set me back nearly a hundred pounds, as the Telegraph highlighted a couple of days ago (West End premium ticket prices treble in ten years) and anyway it is virtually sold out. On screen at Dedham it would cost one tenth as much, while a cinema ticket would be four pounds.
Today's Telegraph has a complaint from cash-strapped millennial Radhika Sanghani that she and her friends can't afford culture. West End theatre prices are too high, let alone opera or ballet, while a ticket to the Arctic Monkeys set someone back half a week's wages. Er, yes, but the Arctic Monkey's debut album was the fastest selling album in British history, they have won seven Brit Awards, and the Mercury prize, and headlined at Glastonbury twice. To say that because you can't afford to go and see the Arctic Monkeys live, you can't afford culture is like me saying that because I can't go for dinner at le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, I can't afford to eat.
It seems disingenuous to equate Culture with the various types of live stage performance. I get a lot of my Culture fix from the visual arts, and a great deal of it is free. If you are happy to look at permanent collections then there are great tracts of world class fine art free to view, all over the UK. Tickets for temporary exhibitions will set you back between about six and around sixteen pounds, not negligible for anyone on a low income, but a lot less than The Book of Mormon. Or live classical music, as soon as you get outside the ambit of the really big name stars and full symphony orchestras. If Radhika Sanghani can arrange her day so that she can take a slightly long lunch hour once in a while, she will find world class chamber musicians performing at venues all over London for between ten pounds and twelve pounds fifty a ticket. Not negligible, but less than you would easily spend on a bottle of wine in a London wine bar. Or there are less famous but still good musicians performing for nothing but a retiring collection, or free as part of summer arts festivals, if you keep your eyes peeled. Even Colchester runs to free lunchtime recitals, while all around the country music societies putting on evening recitals would welcome a new twenty-something cohort of audience members with tears of gratitude.
Or if chamber music really doesn't appeal, folk and jazz come pretty affordable. I tend to give jazz a wide berth myself, unless duty or sociability takes me with people I know, and then I always remember how much I don't like jazz. But I do like folk, and it is really quite difficult to spend more than twenty pounds on a ticket for a folk gig. Somewhere between eight and sixteen pounds normally does it comfortably.
If she and her friends must have live stage performance, they could look outside the West End. The excellent Park Theatre in north London prices tickets for its 200 seat auditorium at nineteen pounds fifty, less for previews, with concessions for local residents. Pricing at Colchester's Mercury is similar, although I was shocked just now when I looked and saw how much the Almeida is nowadays. But as the spokesperson for Wyndham's theatre said helpfully, in case the Telegraph journalist had never known or had forgotten the basic principles of supply and demand, when you have a strictly limited supply of something, in this case Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy live on stage with a relatively small number of seats, for a relatively short number of weeks, and lots of people who would like to sit in those seats, the price tends to be high.
So sorry, Radhika, tickets for the Book of Mormon are expensive, and likely to stay that way. So are couture clothing, first class long haul air travel, or Premier league football club season tickets. It doesn't mean that you and your friends can't enjoy culture, any more than it means you can't wear clothes, fly, ever go on holiday, or watch sport. You just need to look more broadly at what sort of culture is out there. Honestly, there's lots.
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