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You spray, we pay deal for West End car park
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent26.02.09
The musical Hairspray is offering audiences half-price parking in the latest promotion for West End theatre.
The NCP in Museum Street two minutes from the Shaftesbury Avenue has been given a Hairspray makeover to cement the deal.
Walls have been coated pink and blue, lifts painted to resemble cans of hairspray and production photographs adorn the walls.
Verity Rushworth, the former Emmerdale star now playing Penny Pingleton in the show, launched the costcutting parking yesterday in a 1960s Cadillac.
Audience members buy their parking ticket and claim a reimbursement voucher from the Hairspray box office. The top parking rate is £7.50 after 6pm.
Peter Mawson, for NCP, said they were spending £3.4 million to improve its car parks which provide 1,000 spaces in the theatre district.
Changes include the introduction of environmentally-friendly lights activated by motion censors to cut energy consumption.
A representative of the show said: “The car park is so close it was an obvious thing to do as an incentive for people to come, particularly if they live outside London. It's a lot to do with continuing to find extra ways to promote the show.”
Hairspray opened in London in October 2007 and won best musical at all the major ceremonies including the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and the Oliviers. It is currently booking until 2010.
The car parking offer, which will run for a year, is the latest example of clever marketing in the competitive West End.
Hairspray already has a family-friendly ticket deal in conjunction with the mumsnet.com website which sponsors “happy Mondays” where every adult buying a ticket can take a child for free.
The period after Christmas is traditionally quiet in theatres.
But many shows are proving resilient. Enjoy, the Alann Bennett revival starring Alison Steadman, has added a fortnight to its original planned run.
Defending the Caveman, a comedy starring Mark Little, has extended by three weeks. And the long-running ghost story, The Woman in Black, has opened a new six-month booking period, taking it until January 2010. It opened in London in 1989.
There are already deals for Westminster City Council car parks in the West End.
