London Theatre Ticket-Buying Tips

Since our London trips generally revolve around theatregoing, we buy nearly all of our tickets in advance, but you don’t have to (unless you really want to see a certain show, or are as particular as we are about where we sit). Keep in mind that Sundays are generally dark (except for a few musicals) and most shows offer matinees on either Wednesdays or Thursdays plus Saturdays.

Advance Purchases Buying tickets in advance online is simple. However, buying the moment they go on sale generally means logging in at midnight or 1 a.m. Pacific time and waiting in an online queue (sometimes for a couple of hours or more). This is how we get so many front-and-center seats. But you can often get great seats weeks (and even months) after they go on sale. Search several different dates, and don’t forget to check matinees. Be careful, though, to find the official theatre website rather than a consolidator, which take names that mimic the official name, mark up prices significantly and give you worse seats than you would get directly from the theatre. (See tips below on researching what’s on and finding the right websites.)

You collect your tickets at the box office (theatres often ask for the credit card used to purchase the tickets, your ZIP code or some other form of identification—so be forewarned that it will likely be difficult to sell or give your tickets to someone else if you can’t use them). A few theatres now issue bar-coded tickets for your phone, or that you print and bring with you.

Week-of-Show Purchases You can buy half-price tickets the day of the show (or for the following two days), subject to availability, at the TKTS booth in Leicester Square. (Again, don’t buy from consolidators! Many of them are located near the official TKTS booth and say “official” in their name. Avoid them at all costs! The TKTS link shows you what the official booth actually looks like.)

You can also try your luck in person at the theatre. Theatres often release good tickets on the day of the performance (returns or some that were being held for producers or friends of the cast). Arrive no later than 10 a.m. for your shot at tickets released on the day. For sold-out shows, you’ll usually find a queue close to showtime for last-minute cancellations. Some theatres have email signups for excellent (and often discounted) seats released on a Monday morning, for instance, for shows later that week. Donmar Warehouse, for example, routinely does this.

Research and Planning LondonTheatre.co.uk is my go-to site for what’s on and what’s coming up (and offers an email newsletter). It includes seating plans and reviews, and allows you to search by a given month or specific date. It also offers a handy (if not 100 percent up to date) London theatre map. But don’t buy your tickets through this site! Use it to research what you want to see.

If you just want to book one or two shows, it’s easy enough to see what’s available when you’ll be in London. However, if you’re like me and your entire trip revolves around seeing as much of the endlessly great theatre as possible, you need more of a game plan. I map out everything I might want to see (months in advance), with a calendar noting the opening and closing dates (and when tickets go on sale), so I know the overlap in my most-desired shows. I sometimes buy a membership for a venue just for the opportunity to purchase tickets before the general public. We routinely maintain memberships with two or three London theatres or groups.

Once you know your shows/venues, next you need to find the correct website. Some venues are independent and others are part of a group. See links below (the names of the individual theatres in a group are listed below the group name and link). Wikipedia is a surprisingly helpful way to find the real site: It usually links to the official website under “external links” at the bottom.

Independents Almeida Peacock Arts Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre Barbican Royal Court Bridge Royal Haymarket Criterion Royal Opera House Donmar Warehouse Sadler’s Wells Hampstead Sam Wanamaker Playhouse London Coliseum Shaftesbury Menier Chocolate Factory Shakespeare’s Globe National Theatre Young Vic Old Vic

Groups Ambassador Theatre Group Duke of York’s Ambassadors Lyceum Apollo Victoria Piccadilly tealtraveler.com

Phoenix Lyric Harold Pinter Palace Playhouse Garrick Savoy Vaudeville Trafalgar Studios Nederlander Theatres Delfont Mackintosh Theatres Adelphi (co-owned with LW Theatres) Noel Coward Aldwych Gielgud Dominion Novello Prince Edward LW Theatres Prince of Wales Adelphi (co-owned with Nederlander) Queen’s Cambridge Victoria Palace Gillian Lynne Wyndham’s Her Majesty’s Nimax Theatres Theatre Royal Drury Lane Apollo London Palladium Duchess

Broadcast/Digital If you can’t get a ticket to something you really want to see, it’s worth checking to see whether NT Live is broadcasting it near you. Launched in 2009, NT Live includes many productions from outside of the National Theatre family. It’s not quite the same as being there in person, but it’s the next best thing (and the filmed versions give you an entirely different perspective—usually much more up close and personal). During the pandemic, the National Theatre launched its National Theatre at Home programming, which allows you to watch recordings from the NT archives anytime, anywhere.

Another option is digitaltheatre.com, through which you can subscribe for a monthly fee, or rent individual productions—including some we loved, such as A Doll’s House starring Hattie Morahan at the Young Vic, Much Ado About Nothing with David Tennant and Catherine Tate at Wyndham’s, and The Crucible with Richard Armitage at the Old Vic.

Venue Size London theatres generally are pretty intimate, although some have significant capacity (and several have flexible stages that vary in capacity by production). Here are a few examples of theatre sizes.

Almeida—325 seats tealtraveler.com

Bridge—up to 900 seats Noel Coward—872 seats Donmar Warehouse—251 seats Duke of York’s—640 seats Hampstead Theatre—405 seats Menier Chocolate Factory—190 seats National Theatre (Lyttelton Theatre)—890 seats National Theatre (Olivier Theatre)—1,150 seats National Theatre (Dorfman Theatre)—up to 450 people Old Vic—1,067 seats Harold Pinter—796 Playhouse—786 Royal Haymarket—893 Trafalgar Studios—380 Wyndham’s—759 seats Young Vic—550 seats

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