When Christopher was alive, we went so regularly to Malvern theatre that we spent many years as “Members”. One memorable year we were “Silver Members” which gave us I think 18 top price theatre tickets to be used as we chose over the course of a year, plus two free cinema tickets per week. Mostly however we were “Bronze Members” which just gave us four pounds off up to two theatre tickets per production for a year, plus a pound off two cinema tickets per week – we went to enough shows most years to easily recoup the investment of purchasing the membership in the first place.
Since Christopher died, I’ve kept going to the theatre and occasionally the cinema, but haven’t to date found it worth while to renew my membership. Since I now go on my own, the maths has meant that I’d have to go to virtually one show per month to make it worthwhile, and I’ve not had the energy to do that. Plus, the programme of shows meant that there wasn’t enough each year that I actually wanted to see to make it cost effective.
The programme this spring/summer though looks really interesting. There’s quite a lot on that I’d be interested in seeing. Even better, since we were last members, they’ve tweaked the membership benefits to make them more valuable. Members now are spared the pernicious “booking fees” which add 12% to the price of the ticket, and get membership of the Standby Club included. That means that you can phone up on the day of a show and buy standby tickets for the best available seats at a heavily reduced price. I was dithering about whether to take the plunge and invest in a Bronze Membership when my sister kindly offered it as an early birthday present. I thought that was an excellent idea – it’s going to give me an incentive to go out to the theatre and cinema more often, and if I’m feeling bored on a Saturday afternoon I can try for a cheap standby ticket to the matinee performance of whatever happens to be on.
So overall, I suspect that over the next year I’ll be writing a good number of theatre / cinema reviews as I make good use of my birthday present. Starting with Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia which was on this week.
