Ticket prices in 1963:

On 16 January 1963 the General Manager announced, with some regret, higher prices for tickets.   The most expensive seat would now be 6 Shillings 6 Pence (less than one US Dollar.)  Prices for London plays would have been about twice these amounts. Click the thumbnail on the left for the full text of the announcement, including an unfortunate rise in ice cream prices.

The Ipswich Arts Theatre was in Tower Street in the centre of the small market town. Three Victorian cottages had been converted into a lecture hall, where Charles Dickens had performed extracts from his novels. Then it became a flea-pit cinema and during the War was a welcome club for troops. In 1948, it was turned into a theatre holding 360 customers.

“People walk past this building without noticing it” I told the Ipswich Evening Star (27 June 1962): and of the plans to replace it with a custom-built theatre – 'I’d rather see this theatre so full every night that they can’t squeeze anyone else in. Ipswich only needs a new building when this one is packed out every night. I can’t see any point just building a theatre for the sake of it. The play isn’t any better because it is in a new building.'

Perhaps I was being romantic about the inadequacies of our theatre because I enjoyed the contrast between the dusty confusion backstage and the brightly-lit fun and games onstage.
— Ian McKellen, 2001