A $2295 Dilemma



The headline in Newsweek magazine's on-line edition reads:

$2,295 a ticket? Now, That’s High Tragedy
Ian McKellen is a great—and famous—actor. ‘King Lear’ is great Shakespeare. Together they’re the hottest ticket in the country.

And the story continues: The hottest theater ticket this fall isn’t for the musical of “Young Frankenstein.” Sure, theatergoers are eager to see if Mel “The Producers” Brooks can transform another of his classic film comedies into a Broadway hit. But far and away the most impossible ticket to snag is for the new Royal Shakespeare Company production of “King Lear,” which opened last week for a limited run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. (It is alternating in repertory with a richly lucid production of “The Seagull.”) Part of the RSC’s worldwide tour, “Lear” was completely sold out months before it arrived. The production is making only two other U.S. stops, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles, and both are also sold out. Trolling the Web, I found a single ticket for an L.A. matinee advertised at $2,295 (Read the whole story here.)

Now, here is where the story gets interesting.

I have three tickets to this King Lear at UCLA, for a Friday night performance.

I read in the LA Times that McKellen was coming to UCLA in Lear, and I took note of the date that tickets were going on sale. I happened to be in New Hampshire on that date, but I went on line and there they were: tickets for my wife, son and me. $200 total. Which, truly, is a lot of money for me to spend on theater tickets.

But now I might be able to turn that $200 into $6000. Or more. And THAT truly is an awful lot of money. Easy money. I'm an English teacher, for Gods sake, and a Shakespeare lover....and yet....

Art? Mammon?

Stay tuned. But I think I'm going to go to the play.









Posted: Sun - September 23, 2007 at 10:14 PM          

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