I will be in London on Saturday, September 4th and would like to see a show at a discount. Lastminute.com offers several choices. Can anyone recommend something good from their offerings? I like most anything but would prefer a comedy

sfarah, it would have been nice for you to list the options. But I went to lastminute.com (not a terribly user-friendly site in my book) and saw little to no choice of non-musicals. Also I didn't see how you get tickets with guaranteed seats -- and I fear you may think you're getting a good discount, when in fact they are simply selling you seats that are "cheap" to begin with.

Frankly, I'd wait and pick up tickets at TKTS booth, the freestanding building in Leicester Square on the day of the show. They will have much better selection -- only good seats -- and you won't be standing in line very long to get them.

By the way, I also saw Lastminute.com advertises a lot of show and dinner combo specials. I'd avoid them. I have yet to see any that are really a "deal".

If you go to www.officiallondontheatre.com and look at the right hand column, you will see a symbol for TKTS. Click it and it will show you all of today's offerings and the prices. Be aware these are all "best seats in the house" not way back. That shows you a typical selection of what options you will have. If you have any questions about any of the show, please come back here and ask.

Great advice, Patrick! Will follow up.

I ended up with good 50% off tickets from lastminute.com for both of the shows we chose (Blood Brothers and Woman in Black, neither of which are comedies) for the same price as TKTS without the hassle of having to stop by Leicester Square during the day.

The tickets aren't guaranteed seats (I didn't know before I got to London what seats I was going to get) but you pay for a ticket in a price range and you pick them up in London at the theater box office. I'm not exactly sure when they assign the seats but they can't give you the worst seat in the house if you've paid top price.

On the other hand, the advantage to going to the TKTS booth is that you can ask which play they have the better seats for if you narrow it down to a couple and make your decision based on that. I've also used the TKTS 4 times this year and have been pleased with our seats. The wait time at the booth usually isn't bad, the most I waited was probably about 15 minutes.

I'd personally never buy theatre tix unless I knew exactly which seats they were. Sight lines and obstructions are different in every theatre. It is so very easy to get discounted tickets in London I really don't see any reason to buy a "pig in a poke".

Another great thing about TKTS is the folks who work there are very knowledgeable about the seating arrangements in all the theatres so if you are unsure they will help you out. They won't offer you different seats for the same show - they only offer the best available at that time and can't "run the house" (search for other seats on the computer). But they will tell you if the seats aren't great and suggest you might want to choose a different show.

I used LastMinute.com for one show this year (Bombay Dreams). I had front row center of the balcony with no one seated on either side of me.

The seats I obtained through TKTS for other shows were not as good.

Keith