Hot ticket ... Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room at the Donmar Warehouse in 1998. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The National's acclaimed production of Much Ado About Nothing came to an end last Saturday. If you managed to book tickets months in advance, then congratulations. If, however, you waited until the ecstatic first-night reviews, you were likely to be disappointed. Not only did the entire run sell out almost immediately, but returns and day seats were few and far between. Given the various commitments of its stars, Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker, a West End transfer seems highly unlikely. Therefore, save for a few privileged thousand, most people effectively had no chance to see it.
Of course there is nothing new about plays selling out in a matter of moments - and not just when Hollywood A-listers take their clothes off. Any play featuring the names Paltrow, Spacey or Fiennes is guaranteed to sell out, regardless of the quality of the drama. It seems unlikely that Proof, The Talking Cure or The Philadelphia Story would have been anything like as popular without their stars. When Spacey left The Philadelphia Story to terrorise Superman, he was replaced by Adrian Lukis and ticket sales fell dramatically. Star names alone do not ensure a play's instant popularity, of course, as could be seen by the early closure of The Drowsy Chaperone with Elaine Paige last year.
In the same way that it now seems essential to book for gigs and festivals the moment that tickets go on sale, it appears to have become obligatory to reserve plays a long way into the future. The fast sales of the forthcoming Jude Law and David Tennant Hamlets indicate how much star casting acts as a lure to punters. First-night reviews, once the make or break of many a play, now often appear as nothing more than a nod of approval from a critical establishment that has been attacked as increasingly anachronistic.
It's impossible to propose solutions to this that will satisfy everyone. To their credit, some theatres put a miniscule amount of day seats on sale every day for sold-out plays. But there needs to be a fairer and more balanced way of allowing people a reasonable chance of going to the theatre than forcing them to queue all night.
Otherwise, surely, it reinforces an idea of the theatre as elitist, an expensive haunt for the glitterati and those in the know - not for everyday punters. If not, attending a play will surely become nothing like a casual, spur-of-the-moment experience, but an activity requiring near-military planning months in advance. Which ultimately takes half the fun out of going in the first place.
