RuthE

yep… and factor in hayfever while walking to the venue, and it’s a choice between whether the pollen goes in my eyes or my throat!

I can’t help, but would like to report a successful nabbing of a pair of returns this morning. I bookmarked the page and have been checking back a couple of times a day and (as usual) it paid off eventually!

Sending it back to the box office now.

I’m selling Amphi C80 for tonight’s 7pm performance if anyone is in need of it. It’s a bit restricted view, but on the end of the row so very easy to get in and out of. £9 - please PM me if interested.

I quote from the draft letter: ”It should have been immediately obvious to everyone that the social distancing requirements of the past year would temporarily greatly increase the proportional demand for single tickets for any live performance, even among people who may usually book as one of a pair. For anyone who is the only member of their household wishing to attend a performance, the choice has been to go alone or not go at all, and while this should become easier in Step 3 of the Government roadmap, it will not cease to be a problem until the vaccination programme is far closer to completion.”

The letter makes this point very clearly!

I don’t think that contradicts anything I said, does it? I know that Glyndebourne for one opened their whole season for booking on that basis. If the show is on, it’s up to you to risk-assess who your +1 is.

Anyway, letter is drafted and will be circulated today to those who’ve asked.

What we’re awaiting for confirmation of, post-17-May, is if we are going into Step 3. This allows (a) 50% capacity audiences, and (b) household mixing indoors. If they can open at all, it’s (legally) OK to go with somebody not in your bubble.

Actually, not necessarily. It’s up to the venue to sort that out to their satisfaction if they give a certain seating layout to your group. If you all skooch up together, you may no longer be compliant with distancing from the people in front and behind.

Having now drafted the letter, I’ve acknowledged that any “chessboard” pattern would need to have designated areas to accommodate people whose groups include young children or a disabled person. Other than that, I’m sure families can survive sitting with one seat empty between members for an hour and a half at a time. (As one of my friends said - she’s been with her husband virtually 24 hours a day for over a year, so is quite sure she won’t miss him unduly while sitting a metre apart while watching a show.)

Or perhaps not. A friend of mine (who could have booked as a Friend yesterday but forgot) reports that the best she could do this morning (following public booking opening) for any performance of Don Giovanni was a £184 stalls seat.

Perhaps they release a new allocation for general public? It’s always (in recent history) been a requirement of their funding agreement, though I don’t know if this is currently waived.

I don’t have the info to comment further on Sadler‘s Wells. However, I challenged the Southbank Centre about the lack of singles in the RFH seating plan, and was told that there was flexibility available - a single booker could call the box office and be allowed to book one of a pair, with the other removed from sale. So their initial optics were poor, and they weren’t transparent about how they could accommodate people, but they *were* - like just about every other org I’ve heard reports about - able to find solutions where necessary. In contrast, the ROH has taken a blanket “computer says no” attitude, which has resulted in the ridiculous scenario whereby people paying £1260pa in membership - that’s a Premium 1 subscription - were in some actual reported cases unable to access a seat anywhere in the Stalls Circle or Balcony as a single, while a member of the general public who’s able to book as a pair can go in later this morning and have a good choice of seats throughout the house. I’m sure that as lovers of the arts we all appreciate the decisions that will have had to be made about how best to use the available capacity. But telling members who complain that they can’t “leave a gap in the seating plan” (I’ve now seen emails from 2 members who’ve been told this) is not acceptable. We are all individual members, not awkwardly-shaped jigsaw pieces that can be slotted in to fill in the corners. Our money and loyalty was good enough for the ROH when they were taking our membership money, and if their seating plan fails to cater for such an enormous subset of us, they need a new (or more flexibly-managed) seating plan.

At least from 17th May it’s *legally allowed* to mix with somebody indoors from outside your household. So most of us *could* help solve the problem by accepting the temporary inconvenience and lack of spontaneity of having to find a friend to go with. What’s been extremely galling over the last few months, especially when theatres were briefly open around November - and this isn’t a ROH problem - is the fact that for anyone who doesn’t live with someone with identical interests, we had three choices: book a single, book a pair for just ourself (and pay double), or don’t go at all. Which to be blunt was like a kick in the teeth from those companies which offered seating only or mostly in pairs - having been stuck alone in my flat for several months, longing to go to the theatre.