Shaftesbury Avenue’s latest (part) refurbishment….

But at least a start has been made to tidying up the public areas of the theatre, even if the reason it has happened soon became clear: the bar was now newly labelled the American Airlines Bar, continuing that airline’s corporate reach that has already seen it name a bar at the Piccadilly Theatre, too, that I also previously blogged about here — though if it takes you as long to get served at the bar as it does to check in for an American Airlines flight at Heathrow, you’ll never see the second act.

Mind you, I didn’t get to see much of the first act, let alone second act, thanks to the fact that somehow the theatrical fourth wall – which is, of course, usually invisible once the curtain goes up – had been specially reinstated just for me and my guest, apparently, five inches in front of our faces. We were seated in what should have been prime seats on the centre aisle, Row L11-12. But thanks to the fact that the seats, at this point, are not offset against those in the row in front of them, and are on a very shallow rake, you only need a person of slightly above average height and/or width to sit in front of you to seriously compromise the view. It’s not even that either of the two gentlemen in front of us were unduly tall, but were just slightly taller than either of us – and particularly during the largely static first act, which comprises three scenes that each feature just two actors occupying static positions at a restaurant table, there were scenes when it felt like having a giant pillar obstructing one or other of the actors.

In the second act, the actors move around freely, but even here it was impossible to watch the play with any sense of continuity, since there was a giant shadow (constantly shifting in my case, causing me to have to make repeated renegotations in how I tried to watch the play) bissecting the stage in two, and forcing both my guest and I to watch it between the moving crack in front of us. My guest noted that he saw more of Jonathan Pryce during the curtain call than he had at any point in the rest of the evening (since he missed him entirely during the first act).

It’s outrageous to think that people might have paid £45 to get this sort of view. In fact, someone had paid exactly that (plus booking fee) for exactly this seat and the four adjoining it, but his party was uncermeniously and without warning reseated when he arrived at the theatre into Row Q of the stalls since the change of press night to Friday had meant that the theatre suddenly reclaimed the seats for reviewers and guests like me. I know this because he and his wife – who had bought the tickets to celebrate his birthday – checked with me during the interval whether I was a guest of the theatre, and therefore had caused him to lose the seats he had booked and paid for.

In fact, I assured him later, I reckon he probably got a better view sitting further back than I had. But it’s also no way to treat your paying customers.

As it is, all of this proves once again the urgent need for these antiquated theatres to be overhauled (as well as their customer service provision). Indeed, when Andrew Lloyd Webber still owned this theatre and the adjoining Lyric, he went public in the House of Lords with an idea that one way forward might be to demolish the two theatres and replace them with one purpose-built venue that was actually fit for the purpose of seating the audience in some comfort and with a decent view of the stage.

Actress Nichola McAuliffe (who, by coincidence, was at the Apollo on Friday; I wonder where she was seated?) wrote amusingly at the time of her experiences of working at the London Palladium (one of the supposed jewels in Lloyd Webber’s theatrical crown), “He may not have to go to the expense of demolition, if the buildings owned by him and his company, The Really Useful Group - known affectionately as Oxymoron plc - collapse of their own volition. I have played in more than one of them, and remember vividly the dirt and disrepair all around….” She quoted another horrified Palladium veteran, Paul O’Grady, who once said, “I looked the word ‘Palladium’ up in the dictionary. It said: ‘rat-infested pit’.

In fact, it turned out that the alternative to demolition was to simply offload some of the less appealing theatres in the RUG portolio. While Lloyd Webber’s chief executive Andre Ptaszynski produced figures in 2003 that showed that the four theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue hadn’t produced as much profit, since the second world war (i.e. in what was then 53 years) than the lottery-funded refurbishment of the Royal Court (£29million), they nevertheless managed to sell two of them, plus interests in the uneconomic Duchess and the remaining years of a leasehold on the Garrick, to producers Max Weitzenhoffer and Nica Burns for what was a figure widely reported at the time to be £12million.

And what did they get for their money? Theatres in which the carpeting in the Apollo, outside of the refurbished bar, is now so tattered it’s falling apart; while at the Garrick, the paintwork as you enter the stalls right gentlemen’s toilet is falling away from the ceiling.

But more importantly, what sort of view do theatregoers get for their money when they shell out for a ticket to see a play at these theatres, too? On the invaluable theatremonkey.com, you can find notes on where and where not to sit posted by the site and its users, and it’s fascinating to find comments like these about the seating in the Lyric: “our friends in the centre of row N had difficulty seeing over the heads of those in front”; “the following seats in the rear of the auditorium have a commanding view of pillars: Row O 3, 4, 14 and 15; Row P 1, 2, 12, 13; Row Q 1,2, 11,12 and row R 1,2, 4, 12,13”; “C13 and 14 of the dress circle. Yes, we had a perfect view, but these have to be the most uncomfortable West End seats ever (other than the Upper Circle at the Palladium!). The upholstery was shot - so effectively sat on a wooden board the whole time”.