The highest I've gone was premium seats for the revival of HAIR (and before that, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY with Redgrave, Dennehy, Hoffman, and Leonard), and a friend gave me a lovely pair of premium seats for the recent THE GLASS MENAGERIE. We did premium for JOURNEY simply because all other seats were sold out--and it was worth it. The MENAGERIE seats were a lovely gift (that they were in the premium section was an extra surprise) and they were the optimal place from which to view that production, it seemed to me. The premium seats for HAIR were much more disappointing--second row, yes, but almost all the way to the inside of house left, which made for a very skewed angle for sight.
I was never willing to consider premium for MORMON, because there were too many other things each time I wanted to see (I tend to do weekends stuffed with shows) and, in that case, premium would have meant sacrificing another show. And, once the original principal players (Rannells, Gad, James) began to leave, I couldn't see why paying these high prices would make sense--as good as the replacements were/are, I simply figured that touring companies with equally good performers would wend their way towards Syracuse or Rochester (and, no doubt, our own Hangar Theatre would be mounting it as soon as rights become available).
On a happier note, we got wonderful discount seats for the Pinter and Beckett two weekends ago, two excellent regular full-price seats for the McNally, and the only premium purchase were all that was available for Michael Urie's final weekend of BUYER AND CELLAR (quite worth the extra twenty dollars per ticket, I'd add!)
God, to remember paying 15.00 for student rush orchestra seats (second from last row in the orchestra) for Lansbury in GYPSY at the Chicago Lyric Opera in 1974! I grow old, I grow old...
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