Who says that West End managements aren’t an accommodating lot? I snuck in a night early to see Ring Round the Moon last night, ahead of tonight’s opening night, which was accommodating of them in itself, but I noticed that a lot of seats had snuck out of the theatre: an entire row was missing about half way down the stalls, to provide access to a new centre aisle in the front half of the theatre. Producer Karl Sydow was occupying the seat across the aisle from me, and I asked him if this was a permanent step or just put in for the critics – and he confirmed it was the latter.
The trouble with the Playhouse (and theatres like it that have “continental” seating, from the Lyttelton to all of the refurbished Delfont Mackintosh houses) is that it forces the aisle sitters to often have the worst views.
But since first night critics like to be seated on an aisle on first night (owing to the convention that we need to make a speedy escape at the end of the show, but in fact only applies to the four or five who are actually filing “overnights”), there’s a new policy of putting in a temporary centre aisle back in. I’ve seen this happen at the Comedy Theatre, too: a centre aisle was there on the opening night of Boeing-Boeing, promptly removed afterwards.
Mind you, one of the hazards of continental seating was comically revealed last night, too – since the front three rows are still one unbroken row, a late returnee from the interval entered on the wrong side of the theatre, and made virtually the entire row stand up as he slowly progressed right across to the other side. It provided the biggest laugh of the evening: even director Sean Mathias, sitting right in front of me, was chuckling.
At least he found his way there eventually. The Playhouse also makes it bizarrely difficult to get into the theatre before the show, too. Though they have two of the quaintest box office areas in the entrance foyer that literally put the box into box office, they insist on only using the one on the left hand entrance for night-of-performance sales. Anyone collecting pre-paid tickets is directed up the stairs and to the back on the left – right beside the left-hand stalls entrance. With a bar straight ahead, too, and people queueing to collect tickets, the congestion in the foyer is such that I’m surprised Ken Livingstone hasn’t rushed in to levy a congestion charge.
Still, those are the problems of getting in, and at least the curtain won’t go up till you do. Trying to get out sometimes is another story. On the press night of A Prayer for My Daughter at the Young Vic, I wondered if the theatre was operating a lock-in policy. In the completely reconfigured layout that is being used, the entire audience is funnelled both in – and out – via a narrow upstairs entrance. Going in isn’t quite as difficult: people arrive at different times. But everyone leaves at the same time. And, as I’ve noted here before, the Young Vic now operates as a bar/restaurant/club night quite distinct from the theatre, so the public areas are already heaving even before a theatre audience tries to leave. Coming out into the tiny upstairs foyer, the audience then has to negotiate the narrow staircase back down to the even more crowded lower restaurant area. Result: on press night it took the best part of ten minutes to leave the theatre.
And I gather from a friend who went on another night that there were similar difficulties. He complained to the theatre management, and got a very courteous reply, indicating that the theatre were well aware of the problems – and have now removed some benches to allow the audience more space to circulate in the auditorium. But it still doesn’t solve the problem that, thanks to the success of the café/bar/club, there is nowhere for them to go once they actually leave the auditorium.
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