Unhappy families ... Orlando Bloom (left) with Paul Hilton and Dearbhla Molloy in In Celebration. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
I've enjoyed a good run of discount tickets in my search for cheap theatre seats, spending 10p at the Royal Court, a fiver at the Globe and six quid at the Royal Opera House.
But judging by the faces around me, it looks like younger audiences are either being priced out of theatres or put off by the productions. The West End has always been a wallet-worrying experience and, among the overblown, over-priced musicals, the choice of plays is currently disturbingly slim. Cardinal drama The Last Confession was deemed "sturdy but stodgy" by Lyn Gardner, and I get the same stale whiff from The Letter. They're billed as thrillers, but look like middle-aged, middle-of-the-road offerings with the reassuring presence of TV stars (David Suchet and Jenny Seagrove).
At the Duke of York's, another play is banking on a bigger star to fill its stalls. David Storey's 1969 drama In Celebration follows the strained homecoming of three sons for their parents' wedding anniversary in a small Yorkshire mining community. Similarly unlikely to woo a young audience, then, were it not for the presence of Orlando Bloom, making his stage debut. It's a straight-faced and entirely unsexy play, but it's attracting gaggles of fans eager to get an eyeful of Orlando.
The theatre's offering a good deal to ensure a young audience - top-priced seats in the stalls (£45) can be snapped up for £15 if you're under 26. Impressively, these tickets are available in advance rather than just as standbys. It's an initiative that was introduced after the previews, producer Sonia Friedman tells me, because dozens of young fans were hanging around to get a glimpse of Bloom, but couldn't afford a ticket for the play. The marketeers are reaching out to kids by targeting YouTube and MySpace and the play has its own website, complete with a video interview in which the cast are quick to point out that the play is funnier than the synopsis sounds (it's true).
I'm over 26 so have to make do with another ticket deal - the theatre sells 20 "day seats" from 10am. At £20, they're not exactly cheap, but still less than half the original price. A lady outside the theatre isn't convinced. "I paid that much a couple of years ago," she says, "but that was for Sir Ian McKellen."
The audience last night was predominantly female (there were only two other men in my row) and there were indeed lots of young fans. If giddy anticipation hung in the air, so did a vague suspicion about the play. "It's two and a half hours long," groaned the girl behind me. So how does it go down with the kids? At the interval, one teenager moans that it's "just a bunch of conversations"; in the second half, another starts texting before an usher steps in.
This kitchen-sink drama is probably a harder sell than Treats with Billie Piper or the star-cluttered productions of This is Our Youth, but Friedman is right to call In Celebration a "rich, full play" and it deserves to be seen. If some members of last night's audience seemed nonplussed, In Celebration is nevertheless the talk of the Bloom fansites. Alongside the interest in Orlando's side-parting and moustache, fans are engaging with the play and - shock, horror - buying copies of it.
Up the road from the Duke of York's, Spamalot is offering a "pay your age" matinee deal for five to 15-year-olds - another nice initiative to get a younger crowd through the door. But surely the rest of the West End must do their bit to nurture the next generation of theatregoers and improve their dramatic diet by putting on stimulating, quality plays at the right price.
• Chris sat in seat M4 in the stalls and paid £20
