The appalling Barbican….. and the welcome Albert Hall

The BITE season may have revitalized what goes on inside the theatres, but the appalling Barbican Centre remains a miasma of confusion and unlovely public spaces, a situation exacerbated rather than lessened right now as it finds itself in the midst of a (rather frighteningly prolonged) foyer refurbishment that was originally budgeted at £12.25m, virtually enough to build the entire (and entirely wonderful) Unicorn Theatre from scratch. Maybe it has to get worse before it gets better. Let’s hope so; but so far, the signs are not encouraging, literally so, with a huge sign stating what can only be described as the bleedin’ obvious with massive lettering spelling out ‘Hall’ near the Barbican Hall, for instance.

But beyond these cosmetics, even more tangible (and inexcusable) are the bad manners of the house management that beggar belief, too. The matinee of Tintin that I attended yesterday clashed with a graduation ceremony for London Metropolitan University taking place simultaneously in the aforementioned ‘Hall’; and so a vast swathe of the main foyer area – the bits not already covered in by building work, that is – was apparently not available to theatre patrons, as I discovered when I attempted to purchase a tea and flapjack from the refreshment counter, and was told that it was only available to people attending the graduation (even though there was but one person ahead of me in the queue at the time). I was re-directed instead to the Waterside Café, two flights up, where I didn’t choose to go, so the Barbican lost out on that piece of revenue, to boot.

And while nothing can solve the difficulties of actually getting to the centre – and the current main entrance, in the midst of its refurbishment, is more uninviting than ever — it would help if patrons arriving by car, as I did yesterday, were actually able to pay for their parking at working payment stations. At least two of the machines I encountered were out-of-order.

There’s an air of neglect about this place, even as they are trying to apparently improve it. The fatal combination of a house management that seems indifferent, if not outright hostile, to its paying customers and the slow progress of the “improvements” seems to be running the place even further downhill. No wonder, I think now, that the RSC were so determined to leave it.

Meanwhile, fresh from the unlovely — and probably terminally unlovable — Barbican, I went last night to the Royal Albert Hall, the nation’s village hall as it is sometimes described, and one of the most stunning public buildings in the world, to see Bryn Terfel’s Christmas concert. This, too, isn’t the easiest place to get to from public transport – it’s a good ten minutes walk from the tube – but in this case, the walk actually serves to magnify the sense of expectation rather than the dread you get on to the Barbican’s wind-swept approaches. And even if the entrance areas are functional rather than exactly welcoming, and refreshments here in overall short supply, all is forgiven for the spectacular, wrap-around auditorium, that seems to pull the audience into a warm embrace and never lets go.