The Welsh Rip Off?

How much are we prepared to pay – or how much can we afford to pay – to satisfy our appetite for culture?

We all need culture whether it’s Film, Literature, Opera, Jazz, Folk Music, Comedy, Theatre or Eisteddfods.

Last year, when it was announced that a play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, was opening in London this summer, I wrote an article about it for the South Wales Evening Post entitled “Theatre of the Absurd Ticket Prices”.

Actually they’re two separate plays – Part One is a matinee, Part Two is performed in the evenings. And you have to pay separately for each show.

What ‘HP’ sauce!

Geddit?

The plays have now opened to positive reviews and are already booking to 2018. So Ms. Rowling can stop worrying about paying her heating bills this winter. Ha! Ha!

Obviously fans will want to see both plays, otherwise they’ll be missing out. The combined cost of tickets, hotels and rail fares for a Welsh family or four to see both plays would pay for a week in Majorca.

Talking of costs, Abergavenny recently hosted the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru (our National Eisteddfod), which was apparently very successful. It might have attracted a lot more people if the ticket prices had been more reasonable.

I understand adults paid around £20 to enter the Maes, reducing to £10 after 4pm.  Additionally, tickets for evening concerts ranged from £10 to £25.

I’m a fan of the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru and truly believe that we should support Welsh culture and tradition. So why do they make it hard for low earners with families to experience Welsh culture?

They MUST get the pricing right because they’re clearly way off the mark, excluding so many people, families, young and old. I was also told that the wheelchair access was quite poor, too.

It’s not just visitors who have to pay through the nose. For individuals and small businesses (and bigger ones just trying to make cost savings) who want a stand there, the price of marketing their goods is beyond most budgets.

By pricing so high, it turns the event into a very middle-class activity, whereas being able to embrace the Welsh culture should be available to all.

Will I be seeing the Harry Potter plays?

Only when the tickets are reduced to a quid-each*.

*Quidditch.

Geddit?