Box office poison

[desperance]

It is a fact long established and widely known (and did you see, did you approve how I avoided saying it was a truth universally acknowledged? Aren't you grateful?) that I am fatal to any commercial endeavour, that everything I touch turns to dust and ashes in the till.

I should, perhaps, have warned my play's producer.

As of yesterday morning, the theatre had sold precisely six tickets for the opening night, in eight days' time. Six. There must surely be more than six people on Tyneside - no, one of those six is flying in from France: five on Tyneside, then - who are willing to risk a new play?

If so, we've clearly not found them yet. At this rate, the cast will outnumber the audience. Again...

Comments

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

How many of those who are not coming did the box office tell that the tickets were £14 (and £12 concessions) rather than £8 (and £5 concessions, which my advancing years now qualify me for, and no I can't believe it either)?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Can't answer the question. It's handy to have a whipping-boy to blame (is that a mixed metaphor? my understanding being that whipping boys were not actually blamed, only punished?), but the confusion only lasted a couple of days. The great drag of my commercial failure has lasted three decades; I blame myself, of course I do...