Last weekend I went to see Rocketman – great film. However, my first time in the refurbished Odeon Leicester Square and although the staff were all lovely, some of them hadn’t got a clue and so the name badges with film titles on them should have read “Fawlty Towers”.
The week before I went in to ask what days the organist played and the nice young man on the front doors knew exactly what I was talking about and said Fridays and Saturdays. I asked if he would play the following weekend but he didn’t know and said to ask again next week.
There is no information whatsoever on the Odeon website.
On Tuesday last week I went back in and nobody had a clue what I was talking about. Eventually a member of staff overhead and said that he plays Fridays and Saturdays 15 minutes before the 5.30pm programme. When I asked if he would definitely play this weekend he wasn’t able to tell me and said to ask again on Thursday!
So on Thursday I went in again and asked and it was like getting blood out of a stone. One man said “I think he’ll be here tomorrow but we don’t know about Saturday”.
So on Saturday I went into the foyer again and asked if the organist would be playing at 5.15pm today. The staff looked at me like I’d got two heads! One asked another, another asked another and then finally a really helpful man said “well he did play yesterday so he’ll probably play again today but we don’t know yet” When I said he was due to start playing in 25 minutes I was told “we haven’t seen him come in yet, we usually see him come through the front doors but he doesn’t actually check in with anybody, he just comes in, plays the organ and goes home!” After 10 minutes I asked again and this time somebody radioed to ask and the answer was “we don’t know”.
I spoke to someone else and asked them if they could help, but no. I said surely you don’t have the organist come in to the building and go under the stage and rise up out of out the pit without anybody knowing? Surely this needs liaising with the projectionist? Also, if the management don’t know, what about health and safety? The organist could come in, go sub stage, have a heart attact and nobody knows because he supposedly just turns up and plays without letting anyone know?
So I waited and waited until 5.10pm and approached the lady duty manager and explained. I said that nobody seemed to have the answer and surely someone in charge would know? She said to hang on a moment and I’ll go and find out and disappered in a door under the Circle stairs. This was the last I saw of her! She never came back to me at all.
At 5.25pm when the programme was due to start in 5 minutes a very nice young man came up to me and said “I’m sorry but we still don’t know if the organist is going to be playing today so if I give you a complimentary ticket for the film at least if he does play then its a bonus” I thanked him very much but said if the organist was playing today he would have started 10 minutes ago so he’s obviously not going to be so I went in to the Stalls and what did I see and hear? Yes THE ORGAN BEING PLAYED!
So all the while the duty manager and the other staff said they had no idea whether or not he’d arrived, he was actually entertaining the audience so i got the last 5 minutes of his performance. I ran out and told the man who’d given me the comp ticket that the organist was there AND playing.
The film was great and it was kind of them to give me a free ticket but I had gone specifically to hear the organist and see the film so I sat there seeing about the incompetence of the management.
In addition, the first 5 minutes of the Odeon info on screen and the ads were completely without any sound! So we all sat there in silence.
The new seats are great but the whole ambience of the flagship of the Odeon chain has been lost by no longer having any screen tabs. That is fine in the tiny screens but where is the cinematic theatricality of going to a super cinema without the curtains and the coloured lighting on them? One only has to look at how super cinemas like the Plaza Stockport are proud of their heritage and make going to the cinema an event, plus they too have an organ.
One of the Odeon staff who did talk to me said they had invested a lot of money restoring the Organ, so if thats the case wouldn’t you think they’d be proud of it and actually want to promote it so that audiences could choose a performance online where they knew the organ was a feature. If its a case of the organist not being on the Odeon payroll and doing this in his own time without any proper commitment, then a waiver could be put on the website that no guarantee could be given but the website could be updated on the day to confirm?
So FanaticalAboutOdeon, do you know if the new screen is going to prohibit the stage being used again even if it is just for comedians, bands etc on its shallow stage? And what about the legendary Safety Curtain?
The Odeon replaced the Alhambra theatre and was and is (I hope) built with a fully equiped stage to allow live shows and as everyone know’s has a superb original safety curtain.
Will the stage ever be used again? It seems a shame that there is this facility sitting there unused. Many Odeon’s used to feature live shows usually as one off concerts and whilst it is a Cinema it would be wonderful to allow shows on it’s stage in the same way that the Dominion operated as a dual purpose venue at times in it’s career as did the Odeon Hammersmith. With the Odeon Leicester Square being in theatreland it would fit nicely alongside other live theatres as well as showing films.
Last weekend I went to see Rocketman – great film. However, my first time in the refurbished Odeon Leicester Square and although the staff were all lovely, some of them hadn’t got a clue and so the name badges with film titles on them should have read “Fawlty Towers”.
The week before I went in to ask what days the organist played and the nice young man on the front doors knew exactly what I was talking about and said Fridays and Saturdays. I asked if he would play the following weekend but he didn’t know and said to ask again next week.
There is no information whatsoever on the Odeon website.
On Tuesday last week I went back in and nobody had a clue what I was talking about. Eventually a member of staff overhead and said that he plays Fridays and Saturdays 15 minutes before the 5.30pm programme. When I asked if he would definitely play this weekend he wasn’t able to tell me and said to ask again on Thursday!
So on Thursday I went in again and asked and it was like getting blood out of a stone. One man said “I think he’ll be here tomorrow but we don’t know about Saturday”.
So on Saturday I went into the foyer again and asked if the organist would be playing at 5.15pm today. The staff looked at me like I’d got two heads! One asked another, another asked another and then finally a really helpful man said “well he did play yesterday so he’ll probably play again today but we don’t know yet” When I said he was due to start playing in 25 minutes I was told “we haven’t seen him come in yet, we usually see him come through the front doors but he doesn’t actually check in with anybody, he just comes in, plays the organ and goes home!” After 10 minutes I asked again and this time somebody radioed to ask and the answer was “we don’t know”.
I spoke to someone else and asked them if they could help, but no. I said surely you don’t have the organist come in to the building and go under the stage and rise up out of out the pit without anybody knowing? Surely this needs liaising with the projectionist? Also, if the management don’t know, what about health and safety? The organist could come in, go sub stage, have a heart attact and nobody knows because he supposedly just turns up and plays without letting anyone know?
So I waited and waited until 5.10pm and approached the lady duty manager and explained. I said that nobody seemed to have the answer and surely someone in charge would know? She said to hang on a moment and I’ll go and find out and disappered in a door under the Circle stairs. This was the last I saw of her! She never came back to me at all.
At 5.25pm when the programme was due to start in 5 minutes a very nice young man came up to me and said “I’m sorry but we still don’t know if the organist is going to be playing today so if I give you a complimentary ticket for the film at least if he does play then its a bonus” I thanked him very much but said if the organist was playing today he would have started 10 minutes ago so he’s obviously not going to be so I went in to the Stalls and what did I see and hear? Yes THE ORGAN BEING PLAYED!
So all the while the duty manager and the other staff said they had no idea whether or not he’d arrived, he was actually entertaining the audience so i got the last 5 minutes of his performance. I ran out and told the man who’d given me the comp ticket that the organist was there AND playing.
The film was great and it was kind of them to give me a free ticket but I had gone specifically to hear the organist and see the film so I sat there seeing about the incompetence of the management.
In addition, the first 5 minutes of the Odeon info on screen and the ads were completely without any sound! So we all sat there in silence.
The new seats are great but the whole ambience of the flagship of the Odeon chain has been lost by no longer having any screen tabs. That is fine in the tiny screens but where is the cinematic theatricality of going to a super cinema without the curtains and the coloured lighting on them? One only has to look at how super cinemas like the Plaza Stockport are proud of their heritage and make going to the cinema an event, plus they too have an organ.
One of the Odeon staff who did talk to me said they had invested a lot of money restoring the Organ, so if thats the case wouldn’t you think they’d be proud of it and actually want to promote it so that audiences could choose a performance online where they knew the organ was a feature. If its a case of the organist not being on the Odeon payroll and doing this in his own time without any proper commitment, then a waiver could be put on the website that no guarantee could be given but the website could be updated on the day to confirm?
So FanaticalAboutOdeon, do you know if the new screen is going to prohibit the stage being used again even if it is just for comedians, bands etc on its shallow stage? And what about the legendary Safety Curtain?
The Odeon replaced the Alhambra theatre and was and is (I hope) built with a fully equiped stage to allow live shows and as everyone know’s has a superb original safety curtain.
Will the stage ever be used again? It seems a shame that there is this facility sitting there unused. Many Odeon’s used to feature live shows usually as one off concerts and whilst it is a Cinema it would be wonderful to allow shows on it’s stage in the same way that the Dominion operated as a dual purpose venue at times in it’s career as did the Odeon Hammersmith. With the Odeon Leicester Square being in theatreland it would fit nicely alongside other live theatres as well as showing films.