When hundreds of playgoers lined up outside Wyndham’s Theater in London this week, the mood was excited. West End prices, Hooper said, were “out of control.”Another audience member, George Butler, 28, said that he was overjoyed to have secured two tickets for 20 pounds, or about $24, each, even if they were in the nosebleeds. “Theater is becoming very elitist,” Butler said. “The minute there’s a well known person in a play, it’s unaffordable.”London’s theater world is increasingly simmering with complaints over soaring ticket prices, and a perception that they are creeping closer to Broadway levels. Even as producers insist that a fraction of tickets must be sold at steep prices to offset cheap seats for low earners, concern is growing that a night at the theater is becoming an unaffordable luxury.

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Persons: Kenneth Branagh, “ King Lear, Alan Hooper, Hooper, George Butler, ” Butler, “, it’s, ” Organizations: Wyndham’s, “, Broadway Locations: London