Price-wise, row is a magnificent seven

THE Geffen Playhouse website proclaims that the “best seats” in the revamped Westwood venue are in the seventh row center. And so they cost more than other seats -- a lot more.

To wit: A single ticket in the center of the sixth or eighth row, or on either side in the seventh row, costs $54 or $64, depending on the performance. But all remaining single seats in the magical seventh row command $95 whatever the performance.

This cost structure isn’t the handiwork of a numerological cult. It’s the byproduct of a new promotion, the 7th Row Center Club, designed to sell packages that include dinner in a Westwood restaurant, “free” parking and a “complimentary” drink at intermission.

If seventh-row center seats remain available after all those enticements, they go for $95 but without the amenities -- although the Geffen marketers aren’t advertising that, preferring to sell the packages.

Still, are the 14 seats in the seventh row center of the Geffen -- and the nine at the Brentwood Theatre, where the first play of the Geffen season, “Nine Parts of Desire,” opened last week -- really worth at least $30 more than seats in the sixth or eighth row center?

Well, at least they’re available. Marketing director Vanessa Butler says the other center orchestra seats are sold out to subscribers.

Producing director Gil Cates says, “The honest answer is no. There’s nothing so special about the seventh row.” The promotion uses “a little hyperbole, salesmanship,” he says. “Personally, I’d rather be on an aisle, so I can stick my feet out.”