A Performance That Ends at Half Past Ten

Through most of June, a performing arts festival fills the theatres and concert halls of Amsterdam with visiting companies: opera, theatre, dance and music from around the world, most of it performed in the evening. Visitors come for a specific production, often booked months in advance, and many of them write to ask about an hour afterwards. It is one of the pleasanter questions to answer, because few evenings an event visitor can have are as predictable as one at a performance.

The published end time

Every performance has a running time, printed on the ticket or on the festival's website. A production that starts at eight and runs for two and a half hours, including an interval, ends at half past ten. It may run a few minutes over, but it will not run an hour over. Compare that with a festival set that overruns, a game that goes to extra time, or a parade that simply keeps going, and it is easy to see why the evening after a performance is so simple to plan.

From curtain to knock

Allow ten minutes for applause and for leaving the building, fifteen to twenty for the walk or the tram back to a hotel in the centre, twenty in the room, and a margin of fifteen minutes. A performance that ends at half past ten supports a start at about a quarter past eleven, comfortably. A shorter production that ends at half past nine supports a start before half past ten. Because the numbers are predictable, the booking can be fixed days in advance with confidence, which suits visitors who have already planned the rest of the trip around the ticket.

Not a peak date

June is not peak. A returning client writing on the day for one or two hours at an address in the city pays the whole fee at the door. A first booking with the house, or a booking fixed from home more than twenty-four hours before its start, carries half the fee ahead, as it does on any date of the year. For a visitor who booked the ticket months ago and wants to fix the hour at the same time, that means half ahead: EUR 90 for an hour, EUR 135 for ninety minutes. A visitor who would rather write on the day can do it on the way out of the theatre, and the window of forty to sixty minutes from confirmation to the knock covers the walk back and a quick shower.

An evening that has already been long

Performances are not physically tiring in the way a parade or a festival floor is, but they are long, and the seats are rarely comfortable for two and a half hours. The back and the neck feel it. The formats that suit that kind of stiffness are the ones built on long, even strokes: erotic oil massage or sensual massage, an hour or ninety minutes. A late start after a performance also suits the overnight for a guest who would rather end the evening with nowhere to be: eight hours, at EUR 1,250 for one guest, with half ahead.

Dressing for the theatre, and after

Visitors who dress up for a performance sometimes wonder whether to change before she arrives. It is entirely up to you. The twenty minutes in the room allowed above are for a shower and whatever else makes you comfortable. She arrives in everyday clothes, with her own towels and oil, and she does not expect the room or the guest to be anything other than ready.

Couples after a performance

Many visitors come to a performance as a couple, and a couple booking after the show is straightforward. With one therapist between you it is EUR 360 an hour; with a therapist each, EUR 720. Both of you must be twenty-one or over and must have agreed to the booking before it is arranged. The couples massage page covers the arrangement.

What the June festival shows

It shows that an event evening is only as hard to plan as its end time is uncertain. The guide to the evening after the main event sets out the same method for less predictable events, and the answer there is always the same: start from the fixed point, count the real journey, and add a margin.