Orestes' Down and Dirty Guide to Broadway Les Mis Tickets

Orestes Fasting · Orestes' Down and Dirty Guide to Broadway Les Mis Tickets

Or, Sneaky Ways to Get Good Seats

I've seen a lot of ticket questions floating around lately, and figure they'll only multiply as the closing date approaches. And since I've seen this show more times than can possibly be healthy, I happen to have picked up a lot of tips and tricks about where the good seats are and how to get them without going broke... some of these are Broadhurst-specific or even Les-Mis-revival-specific, but a lot of them are useful in general for doing Broadway on the cheap.

First of all, price ranges. All these are the prices you'd get buying in person at the box office; any tickets you order through Telecharge, whether online or by phone, will have a little under ten dollars in surcharges tacked on. If you really want to save those ten dollars and are willing to take a chance, pick a day that's unlikely to sell out (Thursday evening?) and keep checking Telecharge until the day before the show to see that the seats you want are still available, then go buy them in person.

(Side note: most third-party ticket sites have ridiculous markups; try Telecharge first. Official site, same prices as the box office, yadda yadda.)

Ticket prices from lowest to highest:

$21.50

Standing room. Only available in person at the box office, and only when the show has sold out. You get a spot in the rear of the orchestra to stand in; if there are empty seats from people who don't show up, usually you can move into them, if not... well, I hope you're wearing comfortable shoes.

$26.50

Standing room goes up to this price on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Student rush. Show up at the box office two hours before the show, ask for student rush, present student ID, and they'll give you whatever they have left. Sneaky tip #1: Orestes would certainly never condone non-students taking advantage of student rush, but if it so happens that your ID is expired, they almost never look that closely anyway.

$36.50

Row L mezzanine, which is the last row; the Broadhurst is a pretty small theater, but the view is still crappy. Unlike the rest of the cheap options though, you can buy it online.

Boxes A & D: only available on request at the box office, there are only two seats per box, and the reason they're so cheap is because they're right next to the stage and the view is severely restricted. The only reason anyone would want to buy them, besides the price, is because in certain scenes the actors enter and exit through them via ladders that go from the stage up to the boxes. (I'll go into specifics in a minute.)

$66.50

Orchestra partial view rows C-H. The partial view seats are the ones so far off to the sides that you can't always see what's happening upstage on the side your seat is on. If you've seen the show before they're not bad, basically a way to score a front orchestra seat without paying full price; in rows C and D especially, the occasional view restriction is balanced out by the advantages of being up close and personal. Just don't get these if it's your first time.

Boxes B, C, E, and F are also only available on request at the box office. They have about the same visibility restrictions as the orchestra partial view without the benefit of being so close to the stage. The restriction is less severe than boxes A & D, but on the other hand, they don't have any actors coming through them either.

Row K mezzanine isn't much better than Row L, certainly not worth almost double the price. It goes up to $81.50 on the weekends too.

Tickets purchased with a discount code average around $66.50--I think they range from $61.50 on weekdays to $66.50 on ordinary weekends to $76.50 on holiday season weekends.

$111.50

Everything else. Literally. Everything from front row center to the ass-back of the orchestra and the entire mezzanine except the last two rows. If you're willing to pay this much for your tickets, then you can sit wherever the hell you want.

Warning: Rows P-T, the last five rows of the orchestra level, are sold full price and never marked restricted view, but the mezz overhang is very low and obstructs the view of the top half of the stage from these rows. This is incredibly irritating when all the action is taking place on top of the barricade, and IMO it's more detrimental than the upstage-side obstruction in the seats that are actually sold as partial view.

Premium Seats

Sneaky Tip #2: At a certain date before a particular show, a couple of weeks I believe, all the unsold premium seats for that show become available for the standard price of $111.50. If you absolutely have to have those front row center seats for your birthday next month, by all means pay the $150, but otherwise keep checking on those seats and wait until the price drops.

Discount Codes

You don't have to belong to the Super Sekrit Broadway Elite to get them. In fact, BroadwayBox offers them for almost all shows running at any given time. The current one for Les Mis is LM4BBX3 and you can use it over the phone or at the box office by mentioning it when you go to buy your ticket, or online by typing it in at BroadwayOffers. This isn't one of the evil third-party sites mentioned above; it's basically Telecharge behind a mask, and it will only return seats that are eligible under the code.

What seats are eligible? From what I've seen: front orchestra, as close as Row B, but only in the side sections; center orchestra from the twelfth row back; all over the mezzanine. If you want Row B, be aware that the site doesn't consider it the best seat available because it's off on the sides, and it'll often give you a bunch of stuff in mid-orch center before it spits out the second row seats. You can't get front row orch with the discount code, but you can get front row mezz.

Moving Up

So you got student rush and the box office lady handed you Row S on the far right aisle, or maybe you got restricted view seats and aren't looking forward to craning your neck to the side for three hours. Are there five rows of empty seats in front of you? Move up. Do it before the show starts so you don't bug anyone, but seriously, five rows of empty seats means either they weren't sold or six dozen kids on a field trip are now gnashing their teeth as their bus sits in Lincoln Tunnel traffic.

If you don't have such good fortune, it's time to be sneaky and just before the lights go down, look around for isolated empty seats. 75% of these belong to latecomers, which is why the first act has two designated seating breaks when the latecomers are shown to their seats: one at the end of the prologue, and one just as ATEOTD segues into I Dreamed a Dream. Since the prologue is fifteen minutes long, most people make it to the theater by the first seating break, leaving you free to cautiously and discreetly make your way to the empty seats during the second one. If you want to be extra-sure the seat is really abandoned, you could also wait until the applause after IDAD to move up.

(The key words here are cautiously and discreetly. If getting there would involve making sixteen people stand up to let you through just as Fantine is starting to angst, you can bloody well wait until intermission to move up.)

So Where Should I Sit Anyway?

Depends on what you like, of course. If you want a panoramic view of the stage without being off in Siberia somewhere, you're in luck, because the Broadhurst is pretty small. Panoramic starts around the fifth row of the orchestra section, and the front rows of the mezzanine are very close to the stage. Basically, if that's what you want--and in my opinion, that's what you should get if it's your first time seeing the show--you can sit practically anywhere from the fifth row back, except the very last rows. (Rear orch is obstructed by the mezz overhang, and rear mezz is a bit far back.)

If you're willing to splurge, nothing beats front row. The stage is low enough that it doesn't block the view at all, and you will seriously notice a thousand things you would never have caught otherwise. It's a very immersive experience and I would sit there every night if I could afford it.

For people like me who like to be way up close, I recommend sitting on the sides, not least because there are little platforms that extend from the stage on each side and some of the action has been moved to them. And there is nothing quite like having whores servicing their clients two feet from your seat, or a Look Down beggar sitting down so close to you that you can smell the dirty socks in her bag. (Okay, that was just the once; maybe I went on laundry day.) Left side has better sound, right side is more entertaining but you're sitting on the percussion section. Side sections are also good because of the shiny sparkly discounts you can get on them.

If you're considering the front boxes: Box A on the left gets the sailors in the beginning of Lovely Ladies, a beggar in Look Down, bullet boys in DYHTPS, and Babet's entrance in the Attack on the Rue Plumet. Box D on the right doesn't get much action except in Look Down: a beggar enters through it, Eponine hangs out there for a while, and Enjolras exits through it. You'll note that neither box gets anyone in Act II; you might want to be on the lookout for an empty orchestra seat and move down at intermission. Also, don't expect the actors to interact with you or anything in the boxes; most of them enter and exit at a run without breaking the fourth wall at all. You might get scary faces made at you in Look Down, but that's about it.

Sadly, sound quality is luck of the draw. I rather suspect that the Broadhurst's sound system isn't great, because there are seats where you can barely hear the singers above the orchestra and seats where you can barely hear anything at all except the percussion going BANG BANG BANG and seats where everything sounds weirdly muffled. The new orchestrations are partially but not entirely to blame.

....*re-reads* Wow, talk about tl;dr. Go forth and line Sir Cameron's pockets, people--that's all that really matters, right?

Eponine93

Do they do student rush for all shows or just the ones that are sold out?

herkind

I think it's just Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

mastachen

Thanks Orestes. This is really helpful.

Orestes Fasting

Yeah, I thought student rush was only Tuesday through Thursday for a long time. Then I went up on a Saturday and while I was at will call a girl just walked up and got a rush ticket. I'm pretty sure it's every performance except the sold-out ones. (Standing room is when it's sold out, student rush is where they give you whatever unsold seats they have left.)

Quique

That was a great read, Orestes. I never knew they had 3 seating breaks for latecomers. I always thought it was only one during the opening of ATEOTD. You learn something everyday, hehe!

Orestes Fasting

Well, the applause break after IDAD isn't technically a seating break, but I've used it to switch seats a few times because it's the only pause in the action between then and... oh jesus, the end of the Confrontation?

If you show up after the second break they just sneak you in whenever they can... once I got to the city on a bus that was an hour late and they managed to get me in during the applause after Master of the House.

lesmisloony

Aw, I went ahead and bought my tickets last night, but I'm definitely going to take your Moving Up For Dummies advice to heart. And we're going to do all we can to come back the next day for box seats. A or D. Thank heaven for you, Orestes. Your information is irreplacable.

Oh, can we get box seats in advance at the box offic, or are they weird and only on sale the same day?

Orestes Fasting

Box seats are available in advance, yes. Only student rush and SRO are same-day.

lckysvn777

Interesting. I use the 40% off tickets from ummm.. dang I can't remember it right now.
My 1st time I was in row A, center mezz.
2nd time was row B, right orch(those were full price).
3rd time was row B, right orch(That time was discounted and only 1 seat away from the second time)
My 4th time is gonna be row C center mezz on Jan 6th. Yup I have to see the final show. It's my early B-Day present to myself Very Happy

.

lesmisloony

Hahaha, to prove what nerds we are, my friend Emma and I started talking about how exciting it was that we were going to see that next-to-the next-to-the next-to-the (whew!) last show. We were like, "What if 'famous' people start coming to see it before it closes? And then we can meet Philip Quast and Michael Ball and go out to lunch with them! Yeah! And kick Terrence Mann in the... kneecap. Yeah!" ...I know, we're deluded losers.

But thanks for your valuable information, as always, Orestes.

Orestes Fasting

That would be Friday the 4th, right? I might see you at the stage door, haha. I still haven't decided whether I'm going to just go on the last day or the entire final weekend.

I have my closing-day ticket already. Row D, left orchestra.

lesmisloony

Darn! I must have mis... something. We're going the 3rd for sure, and hopefully the 4th. If not, there's always Madame Tussaud's (sp?) wax museum for the fourth... haha, the fourth is the day we're going to try to get box tickets... or something...ish.

mastachen

Traditionally, is NY crowded between Christmas and New Years?

Would I still be able to get rush tickets during that span?

Orestes Fasting	Orestes' Down and Dirty Guide to Broadway Les Mis Tickets Or, Sneaky Ways to Get Good Seats I've seen a lot of ticket questions floating around lately, and figure they'll only multiply as the closing date approaches. And since I've seen this show more times than can possibly be healthy, I happen to have picked up a lot of tips and tricks about where the good seats are and how to get them without going broke... some of these are Broadhurst-specific or even Les-Mis-revival-specific, but a lot of them are useful in general for doing Broadway on the cheap. First of all, price ranges. All these are the prices you'd get buying in person at the box office; any tickets you order through Telecharge, whether online or by phone, will have a little under ten dollars in surcharges tacked on. If you really want to save those ten dollars and are willing to take a chance, pick a day that's unlikely to sell out (Thursday evening?) and keep checking Telecharge until the day before the show to see that the seats you want are still available, then go buy them in person. (Side note: most third-party ticket sites have ridiculous markups; try Telecharge first. Official site, same prices as the box office, yadda yadda.) Ticket prices from lowest to highest: $21.50 Standing room. Only available in person at the box office, and only when the show has sold out. You get a spot in the rear of the orchestra to stand in; if there are empty seats from people who don't show up, usually you can move into them, if not... well, I hope you're wearing comfortable shoes. $26.50 Standing room goes up to this price on Friday and Saturday evenings. Student rush. Show up at the box office two hours before the show, ask for student rush, present student ID, and they'll give you whatever they have left. Sneaky tip #1: Orestes would certainly never condone non-students taking advantage of student rush, but if it so happens that your ID is expired, they almost never look that closely anyway. $36.50 Row L mezzanine, which is the last row; the Broadhurst is a pretty small theater, but the view is still crappy. Unlike the rest of the cheap options though, you can buy it online. Boxes A & D: only available on request at the box office, there are only two seats per box, and the reason they're so cheap is because they're right next to the stage and the view is severely restricted. The only reason anyone would want to buy them, besides the price, is because in certain scenes the actors enter and exit through them via ladders that go from the stage up to the boxes. (I'll go into specifics in a minute.) $66.50 Orchestra partial view rows C-H. The partial view seats are the ones so far off to the sides that you can't always see what's happening upstage on the side your seat is on. If you've seen the show before they're not bad, basically a way to score a front orchestra seat without paying full price; in rows C and D especially, the occasional view restriction is balanced out by the advantages of being up close and personal. Just don't get these if it's your first time. Boxes B, C, E, and F are also only available on request at the box office. They have about the same visibility restrictions as the orchestra partial view without the benefit of being so close to the stage. The restriction is less severe than boxes A & D, but on the other hand, they don't have any actors coming through them either. Row K mezzanine isn't much better than Row L, certainly not worth almost double the price. It goes up to $81.50 on the weekends too. Tickets purchased with a discount code average around $66.50--I think they range from $61.50 on weekdays to $66.50 on ordinary weekends to $76.50 on holiday season weekends. $111.50 Everything else. Literally. Everything from front row center to the ass-back of the orchestra and the entire mezzanine except the last two rows. If you're willing to pay this much for your tickets, then you can sit wherever the hell you want. Warning: Rows P-T, the last five rows of the orchestra level, are sold full price and never marked restricted view, but the mezz overhang is very low and obstructs the view of the top half of the stage from these rows. This is incredibly irritating when all the action is taking place on top of the barricade, and IMO it's more detrimental than the upstage-side obstruction in the seats that are actually sold as partial view. Premium Seats Sneaky Tip #2: At a certain date before a particular show, a couple of weeks I believe, all the unsold premium seats for that show become available for the standard price of $111.50. If you absolutely have to have those front row center seats for your birthday next month, by all means pay the $150, but otherwise keep checking on those seats and wait until the price drops. Discount Codes You don't have to belong to the Super Sekrit Broadway Elite to get them. In fact, BroadwayBox offers them for almost all shows running at any given time. The current one for Les Mis is LM4BBX3 and you can use it over the phone or at the box office by mentioning it when you go to buy your ticket, or online by typing it in at BroadwayOffers. This isn't one of the evil third-party sites mentioned above; it's basically Telecharge behind a mask, and it will only return seats that are eligible under the code. What seats are eligible? From what I've seen: front orchestra, as close as Row B, but only in the side sections; center orchestra from the twelfth row back; all over the mezzanine. If you want Row B, be aware that the site doesn't consider it the best seat available because it's off on the sides, and it'll often give you a bunch of stuff in mid-orch center before it spits out the second row seats. You can't get front row orch with the discount code, but you can get front row mezz. Moving Up So you got student rush and the box office lady handed you Row S on the far right aisle, or maybe you got restricted view seats and aren't looking forward to craning your neck to the side for three hours. Are there five rows of empty seats in front of you? Move up. Do it before the show starts so you don't bug anyone, but seriously, five rows of empty seats means either they weren't sold or six dozen kids on a field trip are now gnashing their teeth as their bus sits in Lincoln Tunnel traffic. If you don't have such good fortune, it's time to be sneaky and just before the lights go down, look around for isolated empty seats. 75% of these belong to latecomers, which is why the first act has two designated seating breaks when the latecomers are shown to their seats: one at the end of the prologue, and one just as ATEOTD segues into I Dreamed a Dream. Since the prologue is fifteen minutes long, most people make it to the theater by the first seating break, leaving you free to cautiously and discreetly make your way to the empty seats during the second one. If you want to be extra-sure the seat is really abandoned, you could also wait until the applause after IDAD to move up. (The key words here are cautiously and discreetly. If getting there would involve making sixteen people stand up to let you through just as Fantine is starting to angst, you can bloody well wait until intermission to move up.) So Where Should I Sit Anyway? Depends on what you like, of course. If you want a panoramic view of the stage without being off in Siberia somewhere, you're in luck, because the Broadhurst is pretty small. Panoramic starts around the fifth row of the orchestra section, and the front rows of the mezzanine are very close to the stage. Basically, if that's what you want--and in my opinion, that's what you should get if it's your first time seeing the show--you can sit practically anywhere from the fifth row back, except the very last rows. (Rear orch is obstructed by the mezz overhang, and rear mezz is a bit far back.) If you're willing to splurge, nothing beats front row. The stage is low enough that it doesn't block the view at all, and you will seriously notice a thousand things you would never have caught otherwise. It's a very immersive experience and I would sit there every night if I could afford it. For people like me who like to be way up close, I recommend sitting on the sides, not least because there are little platforms that extend from the stage on each side and some of the action has been moved to them. And there is nothing quite like having whores servicing their clients two feet from your seat, or a Look Down beggar sitting down so close to you that you can smell the dirty socks in her bag. (Okay, that was just the once; maybe I went on laundry day.) Left side has better sound, right side is more entertaining but you're sitting on the percussion section. Side sections are also good because of the shiny sparkly discounts you can get on them. If you're considering the front boxes: Box A on the left gets the sailors in the beginning of Lovely Ladies, a beggar in Look Down, bullet boys in DYHTPS, and Babet's entrance in the Attack on the Rue Plumet. Box D on the right doesn't get much action except in Look Down: a beggar enters through it, Eponine hangs out there for a while, and Enjolras exits through it. You'll note that neither box gets anyone in Act II; you might want to be on the lookout for an empty orchestra seat and move down at intermission. Also, don't expect the actors to interact with you or anything in the boxes; most of them enter and exit at a run without breaking the fourth wall at all. You might get scary faces made at you in Look Down, but that's about it. Sadly, sound quality is luck of the draw. I rather suspect that the Broadhurst's sound system isn't great, because there are seats where you can barely hear the singers above the orchestra and seats where you can barely hear anything at all except the percussion going BANG BANG BANG and seats where everything sounds weirdly muffled. The new orchestrations are partially but not entirely to blame. ....re-reads Wow, talk about tl;dr. Go forth and line Sir Cameron's pockets, people--that's all that really matters, right?
Eponine93	Do they do student rush for all shows or just the ones that are sold out?
herkind	I think it's just Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
mastachen	Thanks Orestes. This is really helpful.
Orestes Fasting	Yeah, I thought student rush was only Tuesday through Thursday for a long time. Then I went up on a Saturday and while I was at will call a girl just walked up and got a rush ticket. I'm pretty sure it's every performance except the sold-out ones. (Standing room is when it's sold out, student rush is where they give you whatever unsold seats they have left.)
Quique	That was a great read, Orestes. I never knew they had 3 seating breaks for latecomers. I always thought it was only one during the opening of ATEOTD. You learn something everyday, hehe!
Orestes Fasting	Well, the applause break after IDAD isn't technically a seating break, but I've used it to switch seats a few times because it's the only pause in the action between then and... oh jesus, the end of the Confrontation? If you show up after the second break they just sneak you in whenever they can... once I got to the city on a bus that was an hour late and they managed to get me in during the applause after Master of the House.
lesmisloony	Aw, I went ahead and bought my tickets last night, but I'm definitely going to take your Moving Up For Dummies advice to heart. And we're going to do all we can to come back the next day for box seats. A or D. Thank heaven for you, Orestes. Your information is irreplacable. Oh, can we get box seats in advance at the box offic, or are they weird and only on sale the same day?
Orestes Fasting	Box seats are available in advance, yes. Only student rush and SRO are same-day.
lckysvn777	Interesting. I use the 40% off tickets from ummm.. dang I can't remember it right now. My 1st time I was in row A, center mezz. 2nd time was row B, right orch(those were full price). 3rd time was row B, right orch(That time was discounted and only 1 seat away from the second time) My 4th time is gonna be row C center mezz on Jan 6th. Yup I have to see the final show. It's my early B-Day present to myself .
lesmisloony	Hahaha, to prove what nerds we are, my friend Emma and I started talking about how exciting it was that we were going to see that next-to-the next-to-the next-to-the (whew!) last show. We were like, "What if 'famous' people start coming to see it before it closes? And then we can meet Philip Quast and Michael Ball and go out to lunch with them! Yeah! And kick Terrence Mann in the... kneecap. Yeah!" ...I know, we're deluded losers. But thanks for your valuable information, as always, Orestes.
Orestes Fasting	That would be Friday the 4th, right? I might see you at the stage door, haha. I still haven't decided whether I'm going to just go on the last day or the entire final weekend. I have my closing-day ticket already. Row D, left orchestra.
lesmisloony	Darn! I must have mis... something. We're going the 3rd for sure, and hopefully the 4th. If not, there's always Madame Tussaud's (sp?) wax museum for the fourth... haha, the fourth is the day we're going to try to get box tickets... or something...ish.
mastachen	Traditionally, is NY crowded between Christmas and New Years? Would I still be able to get rush tickets during that span?

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Orestes' Down and Dirty Guide to Broadway Les Mis Tickets