'Lear' is king of this town

By Wendy Soderburg

When the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of "King Lear," starring Ian McKellen, trumpeted its way into Royce Hall last month for a nine-day run that ended Oct. 28, crazed Los Angeles theatergoers responded in droves. Tickets to the entire run of "Lear," plus the three performances of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull" in which McKellen appeared, sold out within 24 hours.

On the day the tickets went on sale to the public, the top price was $90. When it became clear that "Lear" was shaping up to be the hottest ticket in town, however, prices immediately skyrocketed to the stratosphere on eBay, craigslist and other major online ticket marketplaces. On StubHub, the going rate for single orchestra seats was listed at $1,700.

It's not unusual for a UCLA show to be oversubscribed and to sell out, said David Sefton, director of UCLA Live. But he admitted that the mania surrounding "King Lear" was unprecedented — he had heard that the going rate for two tickets to the closing night performance was listed at $6,000 on eBay.

"I think it's a combination of things," Sefton said. "Clearly, Ian McKellen is a major star and a figure who is well known for a lot of different reasons, not the least of them being Gandalf [from "The Lord of the Rings"]. This idea of it being his King Lear, directed by Trevor Nunn, and the fact that it's only going to be coming around this once — you have a scarcity value that's definitely pumped up the frenzy."

Royce Hall has a seating capacity of 1,834, but the unique staging of "Lear" and "The Seagull," prompted UCLA Live's production staff to reduce the number of seats to 1,295, said Shana Mathur, marketing director for UCLA Live. "As we got more information about the show, however, we were able to release more seats for sale under the category of 'partially obstructed.' If people could see three-quarters of the action, there was no reason not to provide those seats to them."

UCLA Live is having its strongest season ever, and it could partially be attributed to what Sefton calls the "RSC factor." People who aren't regular audience members are noticing UCLA Live's programming because of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he explained, and many are attending UCLA Live shows for the first time.

"But the Los Angeles experience is not different from what happened in New York, except that our prices have gone slightly higher," Sefton said. "I think that proves that there's a cultural landscape here that is in common with everywhere else, that it's not just because we're a movie town. And the flip side of that is, it's impossible to say that we're not a theater town, because exactly the same thing has happened here that happened in New York, Melbourne and probably Singapore."

The scalping of tickets, however, does bother Sefton, who has toyed with the idea of creating a "blacklist" to restrict sales to people who are just buying tickets to mark up later. And although scalping tickets online is not illegal, UCLA Live has the ability to deny sales to certain individuals, he said.

"I would dearly love to be able to block the sale of tickets, but of course they could just go through Ticketmaster," Sefton said. "I can't control Ticketmaster's policies; all I can do is control my own Central Ticket Office. So there's not much we can do."

Still, Sefton said that it's a "major pleasure" to have this kind of hit on his hands. "I would do it again," he said, laughing.