Yes, for that specific example.

In discrete things like going to the theatre I’d take “ever” as implied or even unnecessary.

With a variable thing like eating hardly and hardly ever are fairly different:
“Hardly eats” vs “Hardly ever eats” => => “doesn’t eat very much” in the first example
of food consumption is small but there’s no comment on frequency and in the second the second there’s a long time between meals but no indication of how large each meal is.

What does it mean if you went to the theatre but not for binary things? Why do we have to go to the theatre if we want to go? As such having a low total amount of visits to the theatre and not visiting very often are the same.

As a native English speaker on Quora, but mostly German, French and Italian,

I find myself having a genuine English flavor which I enjoy.