Helsinki theatres enjoying box-office boom while opera suffers

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The box-office receipts of most Helsinki-based theatres surpassed those of the previous years, while only the Finnish National Opera's audience levels dropped in 2005. According to the statistics from the Finnish Theatre Information Centre, both the large theatre organisations as well as the smaller theatres enjoyed a box-office boom that has not been seen for years. The majority of performances at Helsinki City Theatre and the National Theatre have already been sold out for the spring. Moreover, not even a cancellation ticket for Theatre Jurkka is possible to come by.
     
Helsinki City Theatre sold a total of over 330,000 tickets for its five auditoriums last year, which is almost 25,000 tickets more than in the previous year. Particularly the performances of Marie Jones' comedy hit, Stones In His Pockets, as well as those of the domestic Viimeinen sikari ("The Last Cigar") by author-director Bengt Ahlfors, were all shown to full-house audiences.
      The current year has been even more successful, and in March the Helsinki City Theatre hit its all-time monthly record of 56,000 tickets sold. The last premières of the season, Jordi Galceran's new play, El Mètode Grönholm, and Viivi & Wagner, a stage adaptation of a Finnish comic strip drawn by Jussi "Juba" Tuomola, have both already been sold out for the entire spring season.
     
Next autumn the main auditorium will open with Master Class, a political drama by David Pownall depicting an imaginary meeting between Josef Stalin, his henchman Andrei Zhadanov, and the leading Russian composers of the day, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. The performers are all domestic crowd-pullers: Lasse Pöysti, Esko Roine, Martti Suosalo, and Asko Sarkola. Sarkola is also the director of the Helsinki City Theatre.
      The audience levels of Sarkola's theatre empire are the highest among all Finnish theatres. The Finnish National Opera was second with around 195,000 tickets sold last year. The National Theatre came third with some 175,000 bottoms on seats.
     
The new domestic plays have attracted full audiences both in the National Theatre and in the KOM Theatre. Moreover, even dance theatres have been enjoying a box-office boom for a long time. For example, Dance Theatre Hurjaruuth has an audience similar to that of the KOM Theatre. Last year, the number of tickets sold was around 40,000.
      The share of ticket sales is roughly from 10 to 75 percent of the overall turnover of the Finnish theatres.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Board of National Opera to decide on cost-cutting measures this month (6.4.2006)
  One in two Finns go to theatre at least once a year (11.8.2004)

Links:
  The Finnish Theatre Information Centre
  Viivi&Wagner

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