If we can have cheap seats, why not better programmes?

Good news can be reported in the campaign for cheaper ticket prices. My conviction that more young people would go to the theatre if good seats were priced at cinema levels, at least for some selected performances, appears to be correct. More than 800 seats have already been sold for the musical based on the rock group Queen at the Dominion theatre in London at a price of £11.50.

The West End producer, Paul Roberts, is running what he calls the Lister Experiment offering seats for selected performances of two musicals at cinema prices of £11.50 (the Queen musical, We Will Rock You, on 2 December, box office telephone 0207-413 1713; and the Madness musical, Our House, on 6 December, 0870-890 1102). And I'm delighted that Mr Roberts is adding two more dates for Our House, on 9 and 10 December. My ideal scenario is that all West End producers will introduce the experiment and run it every week on the low-selling Monday evenings. But this is an excellent start.

Some readers have been continuing the debate in The Independent letters column. I've been particularly interested in those who have lamented the high price of balcony seats, traditionally the way of giving teenagers their first taste of theatre through cheap seats. The price ratio between the most expensive and the cheapest seats has been rapidly eroded in recent years and has, I believe, proved another depressingly effective way of discouraging young people from going to the theatre.

As Iain Mackintosh of Theatre Projects Consultants pointed out, a price ratio of at least 8:1 used to be the norm across Britain and was the norm for 200 years. Now a seat in the gods is often as high as half the price of one in the stalls. The cheapest balcony seats in a number of West End theatres is £20.

Nevertheless, as the initial success of the experiment shows, some strides are being made. I'm very glad of that; but permit me one more related moan. Ticket prices are not the only irritation; for real lack of value for money, the programmes take some beating. These usually cost around £3 but can often be read in three minutes. For a musical, they will set you back a fiver or more and often consist of little more than pictures.

The National Theatre and RSC are exceptions; their programmes contain informative essays, and venues provide free cast lists. Andrew Lloyd Webber's theatres also have a number of magazine-style articles in their programmes, even if the £3 price is too high. But programmes at other venues can be read in a few minutes or less. What I find most annoying are the actor "biographies", which are usually just a long list of productions they have been in. Virtually never do you get a proper mini-biography.

Sir Richard Eyre has poured scorn on theatre programmes as poor value for money, saying: "To be asked to pay £3 to read in a programme that the leading actor started his career in Worthing and loves cats is to invite ridicule." Mind you, I'd sooner have that sort of trivia than the lists of past productions that pass for biographies.

At Macbeth in London's West End this week I was curious to see what other stage work Sean Bean has been involved in. In the programme I was confronted with a not-so-long list which included Romeo and Juliet. But did Bean play Romeo or did he have a non-speaking servant's part? When was this production? Without any such details, the information is next to meaningless, and a waste of money.

*The Sunday Times reported recently that the surviving members of the rock group Led Zeppelin were about to re-form and tour Britain next year. As well as a news story there was a large profile of Led Zep. It was nicely nostalgic to read a profile of the old rockers. And, though the group's representatives inform me that the band are not reforming and touring – and never were – I'm all for reading profiles of groups gone by. Next week, Freddie and the Dreamers?

*When Tito Gobbi starred with Maria Callas in Zefirelli's famous production of Tosca, he admitted he was genuinely afraid when Callas approached him with a knife in the murder scene. She was so emotionally involved in the part that he feared that one night she really might stab him.

What emotions might race through Peter Coleman-Wright, who plays the sinister chief-of- police, Scarpia, in the English National Opera production of Tosca next week? His assailant will be his wife, Cheryl Barker, in the title role. He'd be advised not to refuse to wash up after breakfast – there might be an extra glint in her eye, come 9pm.

Except that at the moment she seems to be more worried than her husband. "I'm going to be scared that the knife won't retract and I'm really going to kill him," she tells the ENO's magazine. The audience should keep its eyes on both as she lunges at him, to see which one looks the more terrified.

d.lister@independent.co.uk