The Stage

Survey finds Really Useful theatres ‘least comfortable’ in London

Published Tuesday 2 January 2007 at 14:05

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s venues are the least comfortable in London, according to respondents taking part in The Stage’s survey on theatre seating.

Four out of the five most criticised sites are West End-based, with every one - the Palace, Cambridge Her Majesty’s and Drury Lane - owned by the Really Useful Group. However Drury Lane has the distinction also of being the one Theatreland site to make the list of the five most comfortable venues.

The National Theatre has been voted as having London’s most comfortable theatre seats, while the Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue has the least, according to The Stage’s online poll.

Meanwhile, outside London, the Lowry Centre in Salford Quays was chosen as having the best seating, while the Bristol Old Vic, Bristol Hippodrome and Manchester Palace proved to have the least popular seats.

The Stage’s online poll to discover which theatres you believe to have the most and least comfortable seating has generated some interesting results.

There are two trends which immediately appear. The first is that most of the venues finishing high up the “most comfortable” categories are publicly subsidised buildings, while most finishing high up the “least comfortable” lists are run commercially. In London, Really Useful Group venues come out for particular criticism - of all the votes cast for a West End theatre as the least comfortable, around one in three was for an RUG venue.

In fact, the West End itself does not come out of the survey very well either - two out of three people believe that theatre seating is more comfortable outside the West End than in it.

A common complaint by those voting West End venues as the least comfortable was the lack of leg room in many older venues. According to respondents, the Palace Theatre, which topped the poll for least comfortable seats, has “no leg room”, while another respondent complained that “the seats are hard [and] you have to remain bolted upright in your seats until the performance is finish [sic] and the seats feels like they are made of itching power.” Another theatergoer said: “My knees! They feel as if I have been put into storage for three hours.”

Meanwhile, one respondent went as far as to say that “any of the Really Useful Group [theatres]” would qualify as the least comfortable because of the “hideously outdated upholstery, fantastically small seats shoved together and perished cushions.”

The common consensus as to why the National Theatre came out on top was the “roomy” nature of its seating. “Wide chairs, plenty of legroom, good air conditioning, good raking ensures you don’t have to lean to see the stage,” explained one respondent.

Indeed, these responses appear to mirror the results of another question we asked you - which were the most important features in making a seat comfortable. Leg room proved to be considered the most important, followed by padding, then arm rests, then the height of the back rest and finally the type of fabric used.

The results in full:

Top five “most comfortable” in London (followed by example comment)

1. National Theatre (subsidised) - “Wide chairs, plenty of legroom, good air conditioning, good raking ensures you don’t have to lean to see the stage”

2. Apollo Victoria (Live Nation) - “fair amount of legroom as well as suitably padded”

3. Royal Court (subsidised) - “Comfortable and cosy”

4. Barbican Theatre (subsidised) - “Lots of legroom, you’re not jammed to much into your neighbour and they are pretty well-cushioned too”

5. Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (Really Useful Group) - “Arm rests and deep cushions.”

Top five “least comfortable” in London

1. Palace Theatre (RUG) - “the seats at balcony are too narrow even for a teenager”

2. Drury Lane (RUG )- “The two top balconies are very cramped and provide little back support. The seats are also at an enormous distance and provide virtually no leg room to anyone over five foot seven”

3. Cambridge Theatre (RUG) - “rock hard seats”

4. Old Vic (Old Vic Theatre Trust) “No legroom in the gods! Also narrow seats and hard armrests. Knees in the back etc”

5. Her Majesty’s (RUG)- “Ghastly material which irritates my skin even through trousers, no personal space”

Top 5 “most comfortable” in regions and fringe

1. Lowry, Salford Quays - “Seats are plush and well padded”

2. Millenium Centre, Wales - “leg room, width of seats represents today’s society rather than tiny Victorian people”

3 = Milton Keynes Theatre, New Victoria Theatre Woking and Churchill Theatre Bromley

Top 5 “least comfortable” regions and fringe

1= Bristol Old Vic, Bristol Hippodrome and Manchester Palace - “Seats are like old style cinema seats and are very hard and uncomfortable” (Manchester Palace)

4= Manchester Opera House, Kings Head, Islington

• The results were collated from an online poll on www.thestage.co.uk, in which respondents were given a free choice to name which theatre, anywhere in the UK, had the “most comfortable” and which the “least comfortable” seats. They were also asked a series of more general questions relating to theatre seating and what made a seat comfortable.

One venue was disqualified from the results due to an apparently orchestrated attempt to have it voted as the “most comfortable.”

There is one apparent anomaly in the list - the fact that the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane make the top five most and least comfortable theatres in London. However, this can be quite simply explained. Many of those reporting discomfort referred to the lack of space in the balcony seats, while those praising the venue referred to its stalls seats. There is also the matter, of course, of personal preference.