The Old Vic Reviews Summary

Location & Accessibility

Pros:

• "Very short distance to the train stations and several restaurants in close vicinity!"
• "Nice friendly staff, an easy walk from Waterloo Station."
• "Nicely located and easy to get to from main line rail services and bus routes."
• "Love how accessible the Old Vic is from Waterloo station."
• "Easy to find from Waterloo Station."
• "The Old Vic is a brilliant London theatre, couple of minutes' walk from buses and station."
• "Right by Waterloo station, the busiest in Europe."

Cons:

• "No dedicated parking but didn’t expect it either considering its location."
• "The only downside is that there is a lot of renovation work going on at the moment which creates access issues, especially to the loos."
• "It's near Waterloo Station but can be a bit difficult to find if you don't know the area."
• "Also not very much staff around 2ask where we were heading."

Seating Comfort

Pros:

• "Seats are very comfy."
• "The seats provide space for those of us with longer legs and are reasonably comfortable."
• "The seats were roomy with good leg room and you got a great view from your seat."
• "Seats were well set out and had a good, but not overwhelming slope so you could easily see over people."
• "Even though our seats were fault high up, we still had a great view of everything."
• "The auditorium is comfortable, attractive and has good sight lines."
• "Seats in the stalls had great views and were very comfortable."

Cons:

• "Seats in Dress circle on the side (Row Y, seats 5 &6) were VERY awkward."
• "The seats are high up so you have to put your feet on the bar in front. So quite an uncomfortable seat."
• "Seats gave me extremely bad back pain and tightened my glutes and hamstrings."
• "The seats, certainly in the circles, are simply unacceptable."
• "The quality of the seating is quite poor... This makes for a very uncomfortable and painful viewing experience, no matter how good the view is."
• "The seats themselves were not very comfortable."
• "The seats were so cramped and was close to ruining the show for me."

Staff & Service

Pros:

• "The staff are friendly, courteous and polite."
• "Staff were friendly and helpful."
• "The staff are very friendly and accommodating."
• "The staff are delightful, so attentive and nothing was too much trouble."
• "The staff are friendly, kind and happy to help you."
• "Staff were welcoming and helpful."
• "The staff are always welcoming."

Cons:

• "Was served by a lady with glasses and a ginger ponytail and she would barely give two seconds for you to give an answer before being rude."
• "Not sure what happened to this theatre. It used to be amazing. It's total chaos."
• "Shame staff are somewhat on the incompetent side!"
• "Experienced some prejudice here by a guy working at the foyer."
• "One of the ushers was having 40 winks during the show."
• "When I tried to stand up and sit in the aisle, I was threatened to be blacklisted from the theatre by staff if I did not return to my seat."

Facilities

Pros:

• "Great theater! I love that the bar here is serving quality wine and craft beers."
• "The building has several bars and loos, location is great."
• "Nice clean toilets with fast queues."
• "The revamped theatre has several bars with easy access to the various seating arenas."
• "Clean toilets and bars on every level from what I could tell."
• "Beautiful Theatre, comfortable seating, lovely bars, excellent gender neutral toilets."
• "A toilet on nearly each level, with lots of stalls."

Cons:

• "The toilets were very cramped and seem to be too many urinals crammed in for the gents."
• "The only issue before the show and during the intervals is the 'Ladies facilities' – it is simply too small which usually creates long queues."
• "The loos were outside and were not nice kind of portaloo plastic but for many."
• "Longest toilet queues I've seen outside of a musical festival."
• "Theatre doesn't have enough toilets for women, dreadful queues."
• "They only have 2-3 fire exits on the ground floor for all of the stalls which wouldn't be adequate in the event of a fire."
• "Long queue for the ladies loo. 5 stalls aren't enough for such a big theatre."

Performances & Productions

Pros:

• "We had the great pleasure of seeing Groundhog Day the musical, which was amazing."
• "Excellent performance, the stage is quite remarkable as well, the prop and the customer are spot on."
• "An exceptional venue that puts on innovative plays and shows."
• "Ground hog day was just brilliant."
• "The performance of A Christmas Carol was incredible."
• "A Christmas Carol was brilliantly performed and the atmosphere etc was amazing."
• "The performance was stunning, best experience so far here in London!"

Cons:

• "I left at the interval. Unfunny, cliched, unconvincing and tame."
• "The acting was good but the show was confusing."
• "I wouldn't waste money coming here again, it is very nice and traditional inside but it doesn't, in my opinion, give itself to a production like this, for us it was money wasted."
• "One of the story lines took an incredibly sexist turn and absolutely ruined our evening/weekend."
• "Shoddy management of changing Covid rules and turning families away from a special Christmas theatre experience."
• "Diversity was non-existent."