Chichester Festival Theatre
‘Friend’ on a soap box.
My postbag yesterday instantly got my wild up.
It contained the new seasons programme for my favourite twin theatres, The
Chichester Festival Theatre and its utterly wonderful sibling the Minerva Theatre. My husband and I have been
fans of the complex since it opened in the sixties, all recently renovated
at great cost.
They have loyalty schemes in place but unlike
the Boots store card, that I feel is the best of the bunch, the CFT is obviously
for the benefit of theatre, so that it can maintain its most excellent
reputation for presenting fine theatrical art works. No complaint from me on
that front.
I subscribe to the ‘Friends’ system myself. This is the
base level of support for the theatre, of course the levels go up and up depending
on how generously patrons give their support. The reason I felt miffed enough to make the
journey to Chichester from my home in
Littlehampton yesterday was that I felt there was a kind of failure in sending out the
Friends information in time for them to benefit from it.
The winter programme Friends priority booking
information did not arrive until 11.30 am on the morning that the priority
booking opened at 9 am! I was horrified. At this point I should come perfectly
clean and state that I do not pay my Friends membership fee of £37 for the
benefit of my beloved theatre, Oh no! I pay the £37 which is close to the cost
of seat, purely for my benefit, the idea is that I can get good seats for all the performances that my sweet hubby and I want
to enjoy during the season. On most occasions, a friend from our own inner
circle joins us. My darling man, wants to sit in the front row you see, or with
a bit of muttering, he will settle for the second row.
So that is how come when we went to see the BBC
Concert Orchestra playing pieces from the musicals that we scraped into with one
seat in the second row, one seat in the row behind that and the last of the three required place
was in the row behind that. Not ideal at all.
In fact we only acquired one set of front row seats
for the whole season, that for the superb production of MacBeth. Yesterday the delivery of the new summer
programme and members leaflet arrived at 11 am and I noticed that one of the
events shown was for the evening before. So something sadly amiss with the
postal plans.
So I puffed my chest out a drove over to Chichester to go in and make a personal complaint. When I arrived, I asked at the box office if I
could speak to somebody connected to the Friends administration department who
could hear my complaint. I was asked to explain what the complaint entailed and
having responded I was directed to the Stage Door and told to speak to the man
there who would call somebody to speak to me.
The lady who arrived before me, introduced
herself as Julie the Friends administrator. She listened politely to my complaint and
admitted that they knew some of the information for the winter season had
arrived late. When I mentioned that there was an event shown this time, that was in fact
for the evening before, the Thursday before the Friday that I presented myself,
Julie told me that I could not have gone to that anyway because it was A Festival
Players Event and not a Friends Event. Nice put down!
OHHHHHHH I thought, here we go with the upper
crust tier system. However that made me feel even more put out, and at that
point I launched into how very unimportant ‘Friends’ of the CFT really are and suggested
that we are fractionally more advantaged than Joe public who must wait a few
more days to book seats. We are like friends that are long forgotten, like somebody
you knew at school and lost track of.
The discussion between Julie and I went on for
some fifteen minutes when upon a sudden; A tall man strode towards us and
introduced himself. I was so taken aback that I may have made a remark about
'sending in the cavalry' or reinforcements, but I do recall turning to the
gentleman and asking if he wanted to pat me down to see if I were armed with
weapons on some sort. A one to one verbal exchange was then unbalanced to say
the least, and I do recall mentioning in the conversation that I would be 81 on
my next birthday and that old as I am, my husband still likes to sit in the
theatre and hold my hand comfortably and not from the row behind me.
The tier system of benefits goes on and on. You
are invited to leave a legacy, or name a seat; you’ll like this one! Naming a
seat costs FROM £1000.00 for 10 years right up to £10.000 for fifty years by
which time the building would have been replaced or renovated again and
certainly your £10.000 seat would have worn out and been replaced. After that, Oh my Lord, don’t ask, Festival
Players , Commissioning and Patron circles, Corporate partners and ever
onwards.
When I looked all this up, having been a devoted
CFT ticket buyer since it opened many years ago and having the level of support
well and truly explained to me, it just confirmed what an unfair system it is
to the poor of 'Friend'. When I searched further having been told by Julie and
the tall gentleman that they could reassure me that nobody got to buy tickets
before the Friends Priority date and time, I wonder, that even that is not so,
according to their own website that shows other levels of supporters being able
to get tickets several days before the ‘Friends’ Priority booking. So they did
not tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth did they?
An
unhappy ‘Friend’ and faithful ticket buyer of many year standing.
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