I may just have been unlucky. Maybe I was just unlucky last August at the Comedy Theatre when everything went terribly wrong. Possibly it was simply bad luck that I chose to attend a showing of The King’s Speech at a cinema in High Wycombe, last Saturday evening; and that everything went wrong, again.
As with the Comedy Theatre (La Bête), no blame for the disastrous evening can be laid on the broad shoulders of those who produced the King’s Speech.
When asked to name my favourite films, I have given the same three titles for decades; The Godfather, Annie Hall, and Apocalypse Now. The King’s Speech is so very good that it rates up in that company. It is a triumph and a multiple award winner.
Cinema audiences are on the increase. We like the idea of an evening out; perhaps combining dinner and the cinema in the same manner as our parents and their parents did.
So we started the evening at Zizzi in Marlow and left with ample time to reach the movie theatre complex, no more than five miles away along the A404. We arrived with about twenty minutes to spare before the ‘show’ (commercials and trailers) was due to start. Tickets had been pre-booked, so we expected to maybe join a short queue to collect them.
Nope.
To pick up these pre-booked tickets, we attached ourselves to a line of about fifty or sixty people, waiting for tickets to be spilled out of the one automated machine that was working. There was no traditional box office. There were no staff at all in the lobby.
We didn’t have coffee at Zizzi, so while my companion edged slowly towards the lethargic (even dilatory wouldn’t be overstating it) ticket dispenser, I joined the deep crowds trying to reach the refreshments counter, where popcorn was being dispensed by the bucket at a cost that would make a newly bonus-ed banker sweat just a little.
There were about six queues, but it wasn’t clear until one reached the counter (after twenty minutes) that it didn’t matter if you were in the ice cream queue or the popcorn queue, the staff could serve you anything. Unfortunately they had to trek back and forth between each other to do so (it’s a very wide counter, maybe twenty five feet) and this caused collisions a go-go and stress galore.
I mentioned the staff could serve you anything. Unfortunately, in the coffee queue, I discovered that they couldn’t serve coffee as their (Costa Coffee) machine had broken down. I could have hot chocolate or tea. As the latter generally reminds me of dish water, I favoured the hot choc.
Other couples and groups were still meandering around the lobby and popcorn areas as these processes (that one might assume would take a few minutes) were taking half an hour. People were complaining. To each other because there were no staff, and certainly no management, in sight.
We arrived at Screen Five with seconds to spare, and with our pre-booked tickets for seats K14 and K15, climbed up to our allocated seats.
Except there was a middle aged couple sitting in them. The lights were dimmed and The King’s Speech began its surely Oscar winning screening. We whispered the usual sort of thing, “Excuse me but those are our seats.”
“SIT DOWN!” came an entreaty from behind (we had nowhere to go, we were blocking the view). “Sorry...” I stage-whispered.
The middle aged couple ignored us. We sat on the steps of the aisle. This intrusion into the rules of health and safety brought a young girl (possibly seventeen years old, we later found out she was a shift supervisor) haring up the stairs. After explaining our predicament (“SHHHH!” from several fellow customers) she asked the middle aged couple to move. Loudly, the man said, “We’re not moving.”
Understandably, people who had come to see Colin Firth, as opposed to my silhouette blocking the screen, were becoming more vocal.
“SIT DOWNNNN!” “SHHHH!” “Sort it out!” were some of the heckles strewn in our direction.
We sat on the steps again, and instructed the seventeen year old to go and find a manager.
After fifteen minutes, she hadn’t returned, and my companion was becoming weary of sitting on the steps (we were more sprawling than sitting, because if we had sat normally, we would have been obstructing the screen). As our eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, we became aware that there was a row, about five steps down, that housed the only free seats in the whole cinema; two seats next to each other. Hooray! Our troubles were over. We hunched down and inched our way past the lady seated in the seat nearest the aisle.
“Bl**dy Hell!” we involuntarily exclaimed, in unison. No wonder these seats were unoccupied. The seats of the chairs had been broken to the extent that it was like sitting on nails, and the backs had been snapped so that they rested on the seats behind.
To save you from further episodes of our angst, I shall summarise this part by saying the young girl returned after about thirty minutes and explained that the manager “refused” to come. I said what I thought about this, accompanied to an understandable chorus of “Shhhhh!” from several nearby locations. The wonderful nature of the British temperament was then shown. In my now much practised stage whisper, I said, “I’m terribly sorry everyone!”
From all around came the great, very British response of “It’s ok really” “Oh, don’t worry...” “Don’t blame you...” and so on.
The King’s Speech is a triumph of film making. Cast with care and precision and beautifully directed by Tom Hooper, who seems to have the knack of always bringing a sympathetic and light touch to his work, whilst ensuring that the film has character and quality embedded.
It is such an outstanding performance from Colin Firth, and we have probably all read the superlatives, that it is hard to add anything new. He brings Bertie (King George) to life by adding layers of subtlety and vulnerability, without relying on the obvious sympathy vote of hammering the stammer. He underplays it and relies on emotion, eye contact and mannerisms to convey the locked in world in which he exists.
It is rare for me to ever want to see a film a second time, even years later. I’m going to see The King’s Speech again this weekend. But not in High Wycombe.
To watch this movie, my companion jammed her handbag behind her and used it as a cushion to prevent herself falling backwards, due to the missing back of the chair.
It may come as little surprise that I don’t possess any handbags, and thus spent an hour and a half hovering half on a ‘seat’ of broken springs and half kneeling on the floor.
In the lobby afterwards, we joined other couples who had found the manager (aged about twenty one, I guess) and the young shift supervisor. After some interrogation, we established that the middle aged couple had been allocated the broken seats, but had been advised by the manager to take our allocated seats instead. He could give no rational explanation why he had done this, knowing that the screening was a sell out and that as inevitably as the King struggling with a mouthful of marbles, consequences would follow.
Perhaps the most unnerving and telling aspect of this debacle is that this cinema is clearly used to complaints. Quite how many, I cannot say, but two clues point us towards a conclusion that complaints are very much a day to day occurrence.
Firstly, the manager had, in an envelope, ready to hand to us, a cash refund to the value of our tickets (why cash and not a refund back on the card? I don’t know but I’m guessing to save time, and to prevent refunds being audited?), and secondly, he had professionally printed, multi-coloured apology slips at his immediate disposal, offering free admission to the cinema.
Wonderfully, with superb sang froid, they carried, in the terms and conditions, a caveat that the free entry could only be used in a standard 2D film, as our complaint was generated whilst viewing a 2D movie.
No doubt they have another set of apology slips for 3D complainants.
As with my experience at the Comedy Theatre in Panton Street last year, I can’t help but wonder why we put up with this sort of service. The cinema complex was packed. Film goers had to queue for their tickets, queue for their popcorn, and queue for coffee that didn’t exist.
From the number of people seeking the manager afterwards, I can say we weren’t the only people who found the experience a pain in the back.
I believe that in the long run, customers will not accept this lack of care, nonexistent service and management in hiding. Then we will see pained articles written by people like me, wailing about the drop in theatre and cinema audiences, and the subsequent closure of the venues.
The appeal of a night on the sofa watching a DVD or, increasingly, a streamed movie could easily make cinemas obsolete. To keep the customers coming through the doors, they will have to learn the basics of customer service in the twenty first century. Or hand over the keys to Waitrose or Tesco.
Long Live The King!
Terence Dackombe, January 2011
This week I have:
Abandoned Joan Didion to read (through my tears) the biography of Danoli, the fearless hurdler of the 1990s (he was a horse)
Had my haircut at Brooks and Brooks in Sicilian Avenue, Bloomsbury; I now look like a cross between Steve Marriott and Oscar Wilde.
Not been in residence at the Frontline Club when Nick Griffin was being bashed
Listened extensively to the works of Thomas Tallis, via Spotify
And related an anecdote about meeting the Queen Mother in 1995, and how she told me that she asked her driver to always walk around the rear of her car, “Who would want to see a fellow walk around the front of one’s car?”
