Musicals thrive in record year

New figures from the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) show a 1% increase in audience numbers in London’s West End in 2008, reaching a record of 13,807,286 attendances. Box office revenue was up 3% at £480,563,674, which SOLT says generated “record VAT receipts for the Treasury” from the 52 commercial and grant-aided theatres included in the survey. However, the figures also show that although the audience for large-scale stage musicals has risen by 1%, attendances at plays are down 1%. Audiences for dance, opera, performances and entertainments collectively rose by 5%. SOLT President, Nica Burns, called 2008 “a quite remarkable year… There’s a lot of economic doom and gloom out there, but it would seem people still want to be entertained and stimulated in numbers.”