A Tourist in the World’s Most Dramatic Capital

Some tourists spend their visits to London seeing the Crown Jewels, shopping at Harrods or going pub-hopping. But all I want to do is sit in a theater.

I’ve happily spent the better portion of my vacation for the past five years doing just that--cramming as many as 12 plays into 10 days. To a theater junkie like me, the daily round of museum-going and sightseeing can seem almost irrelevant next to the intellectual and emotional thrills awaiting beyond the proscenium.

The biggest problem is the struggle to see everything in such a short time, squeezing in something every night (except Sunday, when theaters are dark) and on both matinee days (Wednesday and Saturday). I’m not even counting musicals. Although they are eternally popular tourist fare in London, I’m more interested in the talky world of plays.

Shakespeare, to be sure. But there is also an extraordinary wealth of other plays--from classics to contemporary--on the West End (the equivalent of New York City’s Broadway) in the national repertory theaters and in the “fringe” theaters (similar to off-Broadway).

There are more than 50 theaters here, excluding the fringe, and the number of serious plays in any given season is far greater than in New York City. Where else in the English-speaking world can you choose--at the same moment--among professional productions of four plays by Shakespeare, two by Ibsen and one each by Racine, Moliere and Arthur Miller?

In contemporary British play writing, the most pervasive theme is the greed and corruption that a decade of Tory rule has wrought on the British psyche. One of the leading socio-political playwrights is David Hare, author of “Plenty” and “The Secret Rapture.” His new play, “Racing Demon,” at the National, is intensely absorbing theater, about the private and public demons bedeviling four Church of England priests.

After five years of theater madness, I’ve developed a pretty good system for figuring out what I want to see and getting tickets in a timely way.

I’ve paid annual fees (about $20 U.S.) to become an overseas mailing-list subscriber, with priority ticket-order privileges, to both the major repertory companies--the National Theatre in the South Bank arts complex and the Royal Shakespeare Company--that perform at the Barbican Centre in London and in Stratford-upon-Avon. Both repertory company seasons include Shakespeare, other classic plays from Europe and elsewhere and contemporary works.

These mailings, however, don’t always arrive in time to get much of a jump on ticket orders. This spring, with just about 10 days to spare, I decided to use Federal Express to get the tickets to Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 18th-Century classic, “The School for Scandal,” and Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

That decision added $22.50 to the price but counted for a lot in the peace-of-mind department. And, as it happened, the one Royal Shakespeare Company production I wanted to see, Peter Flannery’s grimly satirical “Singer,” was already sold out.

As soon as I know when I’m likely to be in London, I call Jean Knox at Good Show!, a London theater-information service in Point Richmond, Calif. You tell her what days you’ll be in London and, for $25 per request, she sends you a detailed pamphlet about theater-going in London and a computer printout for that time period, listing every play and musical her sources have come up with, including the West End, the rep companies and some fringe locations.

Knox is not infallible. Last year, for example, she didn’t clue me in to Kenneth Branagh (the young actor/director whose Renaissance Theatre Company was at the Mark Taper Forum last spring) appearing in a Shakespeare repertory series in the West End. But Good Show! does offer useful summaries of London reviews and literate information about plays that have not yet opened.

The third step, once I get within a few weeks of my trip, is to buy copies of the Times of London and The Guardian (available at bookstores that stock international magazines). I scan the theater directory and read reviews and interviews with actors and directors in upcoming productions.

There are several ways to get tickets while you’re still in the United States. Knox provides a ticket service, charging an extra $20 for reservations for up to 10 shows. But you can easily book your own shows.

Call the Royal Shakespeare box office directly (011-071-638-8891), 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. London time (midnight to 11 a.m. PDT) to book your tickets. Figure out your choices at the repertory theaters first because, unlike West End theaters, each play has its own schedule that varies from week to week.

Afterward, ring First Call, a 24-hour booking agency in London (011-071-240-7200), for tickets to the National Theatre and West End theaters. (First Call does not handle Royal Shakespeare tickets in London, though it will book for the company’s Stratford-upon-Avon theater.)

The agency will tack on a service charge of a few dollars on most tickets, comparable to Ticketron or Ticketmaster (whose London office handles West End theater, but not the National or Royal Shakespeare). Your tickets will be waiting for you at the theater.

Ticket prices vary widely, as you might expect, but they are comparable to Los Angeles prices. I paid 5 (about $9.35 U.S. according to the latest foreign exchange rates) to see a fringe play, 16.50 for a stalls (orchestra) seat at a hot West End show, 15.50 for a stalls seat in the spacious Olivier Theatre at the National and 8.50 for a ticket in the National’s small, in-the-round Cottesloe Theatre.

Compare that to $36 at the James A. Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood for prime orchestra seats to “The Cocktail Hour,” $28 for “Aristocrats” at the Mark Taper Forum or $22 for “The Love of the Nightingale” at L.A. Theatre Works.

You’ll never know what you may be swayed to see, however, once you get to London and start reading the newspapers. London is a great newspaper town. There are several “quality” papers from which to choose, each with a different political slant that frequently can be detected in the reviewing: the Times, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Telegraph and new Correspondent.

Time Out and City Limits, the two weekly London entertainment magazines, offer other perspectives, along with comprehensive listings of fringe theaters. Call them directly for tickets. If it’s 24 to 36 hours before the performance you want to see, you may have to pay a membership fee (usually less than $5).

In London, you can purchase tickets from the theaters in person, by phone or by visiting the First Call booth in the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. There is also a half-price ticket booth at Leicester Square where available tickets--sold for cash only--go on sale at noon on matinee days and 2:30 p.m. on other days.

From an American’s point of view, London theater-going does have its quirks. The British consume cups and shamelessly eat sweet Cornet cones of ice cream in exquisite 19th-Century theaters and think nothing of discretely crumpling the wrappings under the seat. (I recently witnessed an American matron raising her eyes to heaven at this practice. “Like a ballgame!” she cried.)

To avoid a long wait in the drinks queue (line) during the interval (intermission), you can pre-order at the bar before curtain time and your beverages, with little name tags on them, will be waiting for you. Snacks are sometimes available, but most West End theaters seem to offer only sweets.

The two national repertory theaters, on the other hand, are equipped with real restaurants. At the National, you can dine at Ovations, pick up a sandwich and a glass of wine at the informal Terrace Cafe, or opt for something light at one of the small snack bars open during the intervals. Or you can stroll over to Royal Festival Hall to check out the eight cafeterias, restaurants and bars, some with views of the Thames.

Although cast lists are free, programs usually cost 1 (about $1.87 U.S.). I buy them anyway, but they are particularly worthwhile at the national theaters, which devote several pages to absorbing and provocative quotes and historical tidbits.

Another quirk is a great blessing: London’s exquisitely polite audiences. No one even whispers, much less talks, during a performance. You can barely hear people breathing .

London also has two opera houses. Covent Garden is the famous one, a beautiful bandbox of a theater in cream, red and gold where the Royal Opera presents the usual roster of international stars. But the productions can be ponderous, the stars aren’t always up to snuff and tickets are very expensive.

I saw a deadly production there of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” with a lumbering set, minimal acting and a Russian tenor who yodeled--there’s no other word for it! My ticket, at a reduced price because my grand tier seat was behind a pillar and had a “semi-restricted” view, cost 54.

The other company is the English National Opera, which performs at the Coliseum in the West End. Although international stars are nowhere to be seen, standards are high and tickets are much cheaper--and even cheaper than that if you queue for them at the last minute, about an hour to curtain time.

An excellent stalls ticket for a sparkling performance of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” that normally cost 33 was an impulse-buyer’s dream at only 9.50.

There’s more. All English National Opera performances are in English. There are those who turn up their noses at opera that is not sung in its original language. I was one of them . . . until I went to see and hear for myself.

It was somewhat unsettling to hear famous arias in my native tongue, but the ensemble and acting skills of the company, not to mention the pleasure of seeing heroes and heroines who are believably slim and attractive, made up for the lack of authenticity.

Trying to cram so much into a few days does pose a few problems. I nearly blew it one Saturday in May when I decided to see the 2:30 matinee of “Fashion” at the Tricycle Theatre--a small, relaxed fringe venue in Kilburn, just north of central London--then take in the 7:30 p.m. (a common curtain time in England) performance of “Il Trovatore.”

Dressed casually for the play, a bitter political satire in which a coldly impeccable advertising executive recruits a down-on-his-luck former socialist to promote a Conservative Party candidate, I had expected to be able to return to my hotel in Covent Garden to change for the opera.

But “Fashion” runs more than 2 1/2 hours, and the journey by tube was not exactly rapid transit.

Still in my blue-jean skirt, I dashed from the Covent Garden station to the opera house two blocks away, ran up the stairs to my seat and had just two minutes to catch my breath before the curtain rose on the turmoil and doom of 15th-Century Spain.