Kidman play becomes the hottest ticket in town

RICHARD GERE had a good seat for Nicole Kidman's Friday night performance of The Blue Room, but many hundreds of would-be theatregoers were not so lucky.

Tickets for the Donmar Warehouse production of the Arthur Schnitzler play are proving to be among the most highly prized that the West End has ever seen.

Since the box office opened, the small auditorium in Covent Garden has been sold out for the whole of the play's short run. An answerphone message pleads with callers not to ask about availability.

The demand for tickets is so great that the show is inviting comparisons with the popularity of Laurence Olivier's legendary Othello at the Old Vic in 1964.

Yet some fans are still happy to queue all day, just for the chance of picking up returns. Others among the more theatrically highly placed are pulling every available string to secure one of the half-dozen reserved seats that are set aside each night for the cast and company. Richard Gere, who was slipped through the back door of the theatre on Friday night, probably went to a little less effort.

"I bought my tickets on the first day they went on sale," said Marilyn Barnett from Borehamwood, who works for a bank. "We had such a struggle getting tickets for The Iceman Cometh that I just knew this one would be difficult."

The security guard who will be stationed outside the theatre until The Blue Room's run finishes at the end of next month, said he was offered pounds 1,000 for 10 tickets.

"Obviously I would not have done it even if I'd had tickets," he said. "One woman was waiting outside here for seven and a half hours today and she got in on a return ticket in the end. I have heard of touts in Leicester Square offering seats for between pounds 80 and pounds 175."

The security guard warned that tickets offered in the street were often forgeries. "The trouble is, this place only seats 250 with 20 standing." Those fortunate enough to buy a bona fide seat before the play opened on 10 September may have paid as little as pounds 12 for the privilege of seeing Mrs Tom Cruise in a role that has won her almost universal critical praise.

Outside the theatre on Friday night, five or six hopeful souls approached every group with tickets to see if they had any to spare. These were scenes reminiscent of a new Lloyd Webber musical and cannot be solely due to Kidman's disrobing scene.

The play is David Hare's fairly free adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's salacious work about a circular series of romances, filmed by Max Ophuls under the title of La Ronde. This production is directed by the Donmar Warehouse's Sam Mendes, and also stars Iain Glen.

Among thespians, the immediate and extraordinary popularity of the play is inviting comparisons with the buzz around some of the great theatrical productions.

"This is real 'event theatre'," said one leading West End publicist. "There may have been interest in Ian Holm's recent King Lear, or in Dustin Hoffman's Shylock, but this kind of thing is usually associated with the opening of musicals such as Chicago.

"Over the years, some other straight productions do stand out, for example, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Nicholas Nickleby, but we do not often see queues like this for a small production."

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