Shakespeare tix at UCLA were $90, now $1700

The entire run of "Lear" at Royce Hall and most of the seats for the three "Seagulls" in which McKellen appears were sold out July 23, the day that tickets went on sale to the public with a top price of $90, according to David Sefton, executive and artistic director of UCLA Live, which is presenting the performances. "This is obviously the kind of problem that you want," Sefton said. "But it's to the point where you've closed your waiting list and you know you can't even accommodate all the people that are on that, so it is really sold out."

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Stubhub, a major online ticket marketplace, is now listing single orchestra seats to "Lear" at $936 to $1,706; balcony tickets start at $442. (McKellen's "Seagull" performances are going for a relatively paltry $325 to $548.) On EBay, where bidding for one pair of "Lear" tickets topped $800, a pair of orchestra seats for the final show Oct. 28 has a starting bid of $3,000, with a "buy it now" price of $3,500.

"There's nothing you can do to stop it, and it drives me insane," Sefton said. "I know they're going for $1,500 a ticket on Substub or whatever it's called."

The highest price actually paid for a pair has been $2,106, said Stubhub spokesman Sean Pate, and the average price paid for a single ticket has been $708. The extremely limited number of seats on offer at the website has made the RSC shows "a seller's market," he said. [LA Times]