Worst Theatre lobby

Ok yeah a little random. But that's me, random.
I'm not saying the worst and ugliest lobby there is, im just saying .. well thats kida what im saying , but im also saying like the worst lobby to stand and wait for the doors to open. My honest opinion is the Imperial,its not ugly at all but, it has such a small lobby i had to stand in front of the door where they hand out the tickets and, 'the ticket booth' if you'd perfer. And one of the guys wanted to get a cup of water because he was having like a coughing attack and he opend the door and guess who the door slammed into? ME. He only hit my head and the doorknob only went into the middle of my back. Yes it was painful. But i ended up on the floor laughing. My friend was also there (a coinsidence) walked in. She didn't exaclty walk in she had to sort of crawl in because it was soo crowded, someone stepped on her. That was even funnier.



anyone wanna share any theatre they think is pretty bad to wait or just be in?

Try the Ambassador lobby, oh wait - there really isn't one!

Imperial's Lobby seemed like a mansion compared to the Ambassador.

I second the Ambassador's lobby (or lack thereof)!

The John Golden where Avenue Q is, nothing can be smaller than that.

I actually like the Imperial Theater lobby.

The Hirschfield's is very narrow

The downstairs lobby area of the Village Theatre makes me think of a Baptist church fellowship hall in the South. The inside of the theatre is really cool, though.

Does the St. James even really have one? You have to enter through the stage door to get inside. They only use the box office area for easier exiting afterwards.

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Oh, I second the 47th Street Theatre Renthead #1, although it is Off-Broadway so it has an excuse to be small.

Really? I know 2 actors from it who always exit through the Jujamcyn building directly next door on the left. Anyways, yeah, the St. James doe snot really have a lobby.

Really? I thought The Booth had a fairly decent lobby. Nothing compared to say, The August Wilson, but it wasn't horrible. At least it had one.

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yes, that is agreed. It has a lobby, but it looks more like the living room of someone's house. It lacks the ornate decorations of most Broadway theatres.

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Don't most Broadway theaters have pretty small lobbies?

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1) The Mark Hellinger was a movie theatre when it opened and therefore has a substantial lobby which was used to impress the people waiting for the next performance. In the 1920's, huge lobbies were the rage. On Broadway (west, I guess) in Los Angeles, some of the bigest theaters in the world have lobbies you could play football in.

2) Many New York theaters have no lobby because when the were built, shows often played several performances a day (or continuously, in the case of Vaudeville) and people just bought a ticket and walked in and stayed until the show cycled back around to where they came in (the origin of that phrase, BTW). The legit houses didn't have huge lobbies because the audience liked to mill around outside and watch the arrivals of the rich and famous, then rush in - usually during the overture - to take their seats.

3) I love the Shubert. It's such an amazing theater and so, so storied. You are out on the street, you walk through a door and BAM you're inside with the great history of Broadway; all the amazing shows that played there.

4) Canny producers actually liked houses with little between the audience and the people out on the street. They would open the doors as soon as the curtain dropped and ensure the curtain calls were visable to passers by, as if to say "look what you missed." It's like fast food restaurants that vent the cooking smells onto the street IN FRONT of the restaurant to entice passers by.

5)Before the curtain went up during "Hellzapoppin" in the 1930's, a Western Union Pageboy would walk through the audience, trying to find "Mr. Gedalfin" (name chosen so that, hopefully, nobody would reply) trying to deliver a small potted plant. Several times throughout the show, the kid would walk through the theater calling "Message for Mr. Gedalfin..." each time, the plant got larger-and-larger. At the end of the show, the audience filed out of the theater through the lobby, where an ENORMOUS potted tree was punked down, with the pageboy high up in its branches, still tiredly calling out for Mr. Gedalfin....

(see, it really was a lobby story)

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