A smile goes a long way – Theatre Breaks' Annual Theatre Survey

Published: 5 February 2017
Reporter: Sandra Giorgetti

The Duchess Theatre - London West End's friendliest

The results of Theatre Breaks' annual Theatre Survey were announced this week.

1,757 theatregoers responded to the survey which took place at the end of last year and covered the whole country. To put this in context, research conducted for the National Theatre and SOLT in 2014 reported that London alone had 110,000 seats across 241 professional theatres with attendances in their many millions.

Whilst some questions in the Theatre Breaks' survey don't even deserve a mention, others reflect audience members' feelings, if only narrowly.

When asked what theatres can do to improve their offering, in addition to the anticipated responses—bar charges, ladies' loos, uncomfortable seating and other members of the audience being annoying—providing better signage, better communication and being friendlier were all suggested.

A friendly welcome and dealing with staff who have a cheery face contributed to the overall feel of the visit and was rated as important along with help finding facilities, getting to seats after arriving late, special access and answering general queries.

Insufficient data was collected for regional venues but London West End theatres had sufficient responses to create a league table of front of house friendliness, which was topped by the Duchess Theatre, followed by the Aldwych Theatre, Harold Pinter Theatre, Queens Theatre and the Lyceum Theatre.

Reflecting the survey's cohort, the top three shows respondents want to see are Wicked, Lion King and Les Misérables though newcomers Motown and Aladdin made it into the top 10.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the play most people would like to see.

Audience members using their mobile 'phones during performances continues to be in and out of the news as actors issue reprimands from the stage.

3% of respondents to the survey said they did not mind people using their mobile 'phones (presumably these are the people that do!) with others rating the suggested measures to counteract this antisocial behaviour in order of preference as:

  • A personal plea from on stage
  • Stewards on duty
  • Recorded announcement before the show
  • A themed message before the show
  • A note in the foyer
  • A note in the programme
  • Reminded when tickets are bought
  • A downloadable app

Other, more general, ideas included introducing an at–seat bar service, silent snacks, a downloadable theatre programme app and lasers to attract the attention of disruptive audience members, put into this order of preference by survey respondents with 455 of them rating all the ideas as "daft".

Further information on the Theatre Survey is available online. The survey was promoted through a variety of theatre, lifestyle and travel web sites, e-mail lists and social media and was restricted to UK residents who consider themselves “theatregoers”.

*Some links, including Amazon, Stageplays.com, ATG Tickets, LOVEtheatre, BTG Tickets, Ticketmaster, The Ticket Factory, LW Theatres and QuayTickets, are affiliate links for which BTG may earn a small fee at no extra cost to the purchaser.

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