It's a baking hot afternoon in New York and I'm standing in line at TKTS, commonly known as "the half-price ticket booth" in Times Square, crossing my fingers that the theatre ticket I am after will be a) available and b) offered at a price that is at least vaguely near the half-price mark. TKTS hovers close to the trading-on-false-pretences boundary, as its discounts are usually more like 20 per cent, but a discount is a discount, and I have guiltily taken the afternoon off in order to wait here, patiently, among the tourists and the flashing neon lights, for a few hours.
If I told you that I'd already seen the play in question – Red, by John Logan – three times in London, would you think I was mad? You might if I told you that the combined ticket price of those three trips (£78) still wouldn't quite add up to how much a single ticket for its Broadway incarnation – same play, same cast – costs ($126 and a $4.50 fee, or £82).
But I loved the play and am curious to see it again in New York, the city in which it is set, and in which I currently live. Eventually, I reach the front of the queue and am offered a mid-range seat for $95 – more than my weekly household grocery budget. Biting the bullet and banishing the sickening thought that the top-price seat at London's Donmar Warehouse, where the play originated, cost £26, I hand over the money and head for the Golden Theater on 45th Street.
Welcome to New York, one of the cultural capitals of the world; a culture funded overwhelmingly by philanthropy and private sponsorship and presumably, therefore, the sort of model Jeremy Hunt had in mind when he recently announced his intention to slash the UK culture budget by up to 50 per cent, asking the arts world to lean more on individual and corporate donors. Supposing this were possible, what would this new funding model really mean for Britain's culture? New York is the ideal city from which to explore the question of what happens to the arts when private money runs the show.
In New York there are 36 Broadway theatres, 370 non-profit theatres, 95 orchestras, 330 dance companies, and 1,000-odd galleries and museums, although it's hard to keep exact track. As with so many other things in the city, whatever you're seeking you can probably find it, but you have to be able to pay for it.
Art here is eye-wateringly, and often prohibitively, expensive. In London this summer you can see the finest musicians in the world for £5 at the Proms; plays that will end up on Broadway for £10 at the National Theatre; an opera at Covent Garden for the same; and your pick of world-class museums and galleries for free.
In New York, the average Broadway ticket is $120; a trip to the Metropolitan Opera will realistically set you back between $100 and $250 unless you can afford to take time off work to queue for a "rush" ticket; most museums and galleries, even those extravagantly endowed by beneficent individuals, will charge you an admission fee of $20.
When Lee Hall's The Pitmen Painters opens in New York later this year, a pair of premium seats will cost more than the weekly wages of some of the staff at Newcastle's Live Theatre, where the play was first staged in 2007.
drive from www.independent.co.uk