We often complain that Off Broadway theater is too expensive. We also often complain that shows charge the same for previews, when they are theoretically still finding their bearings in front of audiences, as they do once they are officially ready for public consumption. To be honest, we complain about a lot of things. But now we have cause to laud instead, for Classic Stage Company is offering a terrific deal: All preview tickets for its new production—The Age of Iron, a mash-up of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and Thomas Heywood’s little-known Iron Age—are just $10. That’s right: one measly sawbuck for hours of verse and Trojan warfare. When the show opens on November 22, that price will leap up to $60-$65. So act now. You can’t afford not to go!

The producers of Shrek the Musical just announced a bargain for next month. Called Shrektember (naturally), the deal gets you a free extra ticket for every full-price one you buy. So if you pony up $126 for a prime orchestra seat, you and your companion will pay $63 each. Not too bad. Unlike Hair—which announced Friday that it recouped its investment—Shrek is a bigger, more expensive show to run. Still, it raked in a cool million dollars in box office last week. That might just be a summer bump. Perhaps the producers are offering this deal to juice the fall b.o. and keep the momentum going.

Savvy theatergoers have long known about the Theatre Development Fund, if only through the group’s most prominent outpost: the beautifully renovated TKTS booth in Times Square. In addition to TKTS, however, TDF is also one of the most important sources for affordable theater tickets in the city, providing deep discounts on Broadway and Off Broadway shows to its members. (Only certain people qualify for membership; more on that later.)

Until now, however, TDF has not been great when it comes to tickets for Off-Off Broadway shows. Yes, they offered a package of four Off-Off vouchers for $36, but those vouchers did not guarantee you a place in the theater; you had to go the venue and hope for the best. Now, in what qualifies as a major theater development, TDF has introduced a new Off-Off wing along the lines of its regular ticket discounting, providing tickets to many Off-Off shows for just $9. Why $9? “We were trying to come up with something inexpensive—and, frankly, so that we could say, ‘This is less than a movie,’” says Victoria Bailey, TDF’s executive director. “At the moment, price is very much on people’s minds.” The summer launch, she says, is timed to the proliferation of summer theater festivals; currently, the long list of options includes everything at the upcoming Fringe Festival, 59E59’s East to Edinburgh and Summer Shorts 3 festivals, and such long-running favorites as Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and Simon Lovell’s Strange and Unusual Hobbies.

Membership to TDF costs just $30 a year, and can easily pay off if you buy just a single Broadway ticket through the group. So why doesn’t everyone in New York belong? Because TDF has rules about whom it will accept. But those guidelines are actually relatively generous. Here are the categories TDF currently accepts: full-time students, full-time teachers, union members, retirees, civil service employees, staff members of not-for-profit organizations, performing arts professionals, and members of the armed forces or clergy.

If you qualify, you should sign up for TDF membership today. One of New York’s sweetest theater deals just got a little more sugar.

Qui Nguyen is not your average playwright. The artistic head behind the charmingly named troupe Vampire Cowboys also choreographs stage combat. Put the two together and you have a unique downtown aesthetic that combines comix-style action, sexy fighting girls, sci-fi, blaxploitation, camp and sketch-comedy irreverence. Nguyen (also a rambunctious blogger) is offering a short return engagement of Fight Girl Battle World at HERE, where he also premiered Soul Samurai. Our Helen Shaw hearted that one. You don’t have to start twirling nunchuks to get a seat; ridiculously affordable $15 tickets can be purchased here.

We’ve been fans of Tom and Betsy Salamon’s interactive theater game, Accomplice: New York, for years; we first wrote about it way back in 2005, and have since returned to check out its sequel, Accomplice: The Village. So we’re pleased to pass along news of a one-week-only discount for this uniquely New York theatrical experience. Through July 14, you can buy tickets for $40, instead of the usual $65, by entering the discount code SAMMY when you order tickets to the original show here or the Village edition here.

Granted, $40 is not cheap cheap, but a $25 discount is nothing to sneeze at, even if, like me, you really enjoy sneezing at things. And granted, also, the ticket in question is not really a seat: The fun of the Accomplice shows is that you are never sitting down for long, and spend a great deal of time wandering the meandering streets of New York in the open sun, in search of shady characters. But the SAMMY-code discount is a great opportunity to get caught up in the Salamons’ web of criminal activity. If you haven’t bought tickets yet: Book ‘em, Danno.

The Roundabout Theatre Company has just announced that every seat for the first preview (September 10) of Bye Bye Birdie at the newly restored Henry Miller’s Theatre will cost $10. Less than a movie! The deal is made possible by a generous grant from Bank of America. We’d love to see more of this corporate-subsidizing of the box office, because it means more young, cash-strapped people in the theater. Yeah! Young people…exactly the sort of folks who probably have no interest in seeing a revival of Bye Bye Birdie. Oh well!

The Magic Kingdom just got a little more magical—thanks to the horrifying economic meltdown that threatens to turn all but the ultrarich into a feces-smeared, red-eyed mob of cannibalistic subhumanoids. Starting this Sunday, Disney Theatrical Productions offers a unique deal: Buy a full-price ticket to The Lion King, The Little Mermaid or Mary Poppins, and you’ll get a second, “companion” ticket for a mere $15. Why that particular price point? It’s to commemorate the 15th year that the House of Mouse has been producing on the Great White Way (Beauty and the Beast opened at the Palace Theatre on April 18, 1994). The deal is called $15 for 15 and again, it starts this Sunday at noon sharp.

Monday night I caught Richard Maxwell’s latest show, People Without History, and loved its hypnotic weirdness, its brutality, its humor and slashes of laconic folk wisdom. To those of you who have somehow, impossibly, appallingly, not yet seen a Maxwell show (he’s been presenting about one a year for only the past decade or so), I say get your unschooled butts down to the Performing Garage. Okay, so what is People Without History about? In a nutshell: It’s a deadpan, highly stylized and stream-of-consciousness riff on the Battle of Shrewsbury, the climactic fight in Henry IV, Part 1. Read Helen Shaw’s review if thou dost crave details more. For only $20, you could do worse than see the latest play by one of our best experimenters. Plus, there are two astounding performances by Maxwell veterans Pete Simpson and Jim Fletcher (above, flanking Alex Delinois)

One of TONY’s favorite troupes, Banana Bag & Bodice, is presenting its rock-powered deconstruction of the Old English epic Beowulf at the Abrons Arts Center starting March 31. Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage is the most ambitious production ever mounted by the group, and we can’t wait to see it. And here’s good news: If you buy your tickets before March 25, BB&B is offering a great two-for-one ticket deal for the opening weekend, April 1–5. Use the code: BAGGAGE. That’s a pair of hot passes for you and your monster-slaughtering, ax-swinging, blood-bathed sweatheart. Added value: free beer at intermission. Get your tickets here.

If you ever took a college course in 20th-century theater, you probably came across the name Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994). The Romanian-born writer was iconic of the movement dubbed Theatre of the Absurd, penning classic works such as The Bald Soprano, The Lesson and Rhinoceros. If you’re still in school, there’s good news. Producers of the Broadway production of Ionesco’s Exit the King are offering a limited number of student rush tickets for $26.50. These rush tickets will be sold the day of the performance, when the box office opens. There is a limit of two tickets per person with valid ID and they are based on availability. Ionesco hasn’t been seen on Broadway since 1998’s The Chairs, but Geoffrey Rush has used his star power to get him back under the bright lights. The play (which we reviewed a few years back at the Pearl Theatre Company) is a black-comic study of morbidity and power, as the 400-year-old King Berenger tries to make a graceful exit. Looking for more information for that term paper “Existentialist Dread and the Re/Presentation of Monarchy”? Search elsewhere; on Exit the King’s website, you’d be hard-pressed to find any useful contextual information on Ionesco, absurdism or the history of the play. Oh well, that’s what Wikipedia is for, right?

You have to wait a couple days for this cheap seat, but starting March 8, all Sunday night performances of Martha Clarke’s dance-theater hit Garden of Earthly Delights are only $25. In my review, I mentioned that this sexy-spooky piece is a primo date show. So now, for a crisp Ulysses S. Grant and the price of a romantic dinner, you can impress that special someone and perhaps warm up these chilly late-winter weeks. (Wait a minute. Supposed to be a warm weekend, isn’t it? Oh well, you get the idea.)

You know who doesn’t have a lot of money to burn these days? Er, well, we don’t, and in all probability, neither do you. But you know who really doesn’t have much cash on hand? Dirty, naked hippies. Those riot-fomenting, drugged-up sex maniacs got no green at all; they’re naked, see, so they wouldn’t have anywhere to put their filthy pennies, even if they had ’em. But the producers of Hair have taken pity on the couture-averse, unhygienic rabblement. They’ve just announced $25 lottery tickets to sit in the box seats and do whatever unspeakable things hippies do at Broadway musicals. No doubt the producers want to quarantine them from the rest of the crowd. Read on for details. You dirty, dirty hippies. Read more »

We love the National Theater of the United States of America (NTUSA). Since this frisky experimental troupe’s earliest shows, such as Garvey and Superpant$ and Placebo Sunrise, we’ve been amazed at how resourceful, detailed and unspeakably weird its micro-evtravaganzas have been. (Broadly speaking, the content includes lots of baroque stage pictures, furious dances, goofy slapstick, absurdist non sequiturs, and big ideas mainly having to do with theme parks and mythology.) They last wowed us with a faithful yet utterly bat-shit Don Juan last year in Long Island City. Now NTUSA presents Chautauqua, inspired by the late 19th-century Chautauqua Lectures, in which Christian inspirational talks were mixed up with comedy and populist political soapboxing. We’ll review the show next week, but if you are looking for an affordable Off-Off ticket, this is the one. NTUSA already has a devoted fan base, but there’s always room for more. The show runs through March 15 only. Get your $20 tickets here.

Today’s America is certainly different than the one the Sharks’ señoritas wanted to live in—it’s an America where being able to afford tickets to see the lovely ladies sing out their story of hopes and dreams is something of a dream in itself. But since this is the land of opportunity, of course there’s a way around that little hitch.

It was just announced that two hours before every performance of West Side Story (which begins previews Monday 23 and opens March 23), fans can enter a lottery for $26.50 tickets to that night’s show (instead of the usual $46.50–$121.50). Winners will be selected from a random drawing, must pay cash and are entitled to two seats in the first row of the orchestra—close enough to not just live the dream, but reach out and touch it, too.

Show listing here.
Official site here.
Review of the 1961 film here.

We hear that TONY critic Helen Shaw lurved her some Soul Samurai, the new fight-packed, pulp-tastic, blaxsploitation-licious offering from Vampire Cowboys (you’ll have to wait till later this week for her review on the Theater homepage). Vampire Cowboys unabashedly make theater for people who don’t like theater: plenty of sex appeal, pop-cult referencing and giddily choreographed fights. You have to love a show whose website offers a comic prequel. Tickets are $25, and that’s a bargain compared with Broadway and most Off Broadway. Do any of those serious dramas have hot actors squaring off with swords and nunchucks? No? We didn’t think so. Get tickets and your ass down to HERE, before we kick it, ninja-style.

Got any green?

Goodness, it’s tough out there for the corporate, branded ages 7-to-70 megamusical. We in the industry like to say that in a given season, several tuners can attract diverse demos (the AARP crowd, tourists, tweens, hard-core aficionados), but there are only enough serious playgoers for one—maybe two—straight dramas a season. However, the Econolypse has turned that received wisdom on its head. Read more »

Only 11 more days till the revival of Speed-the-Plow closes. Tickets must be hard to score, right? Not really. Last week, David Mamet’s fast-talking revival filled the house to only 57 percent capacity, with an average ticket going for $66. Not piddling, but hey, that’s an Off Broadway rate. If fish-faced Jeremy Piven had stuck it out, maybe seats would be scarcer and pricier, but he bailed and Mamet vet William H. Macy plays the maestro’s music like a pro. (The other two cast members, Elisabeth Moss and Raúl Esparza, are terrific too.) So head to the TKTS booth in Times Square and bookmark TONY’s handy Cheap seats guide. Keep checking here for ticket tips that won’t make your wallet scream.