Curzon Bloomsbury, Lumiere Or Plaza Screen

It's a pokey little venue charging top prices for small screens with cramped seating - definitely a case of style over substance - but we use it because it does show good non main stream films and it is kind of local. Last Thursday we went to see Del Toro's Frankenstein. There was a private drinks  reception in the upstairs foyer and the staff were all over the place with the entrance and bars downstairs undermanned and no ushers; all a bit hit and miss. We went into the Phoenix and the programme started with the ads. I'm a bit odd as I like to see the ads as, at times, the cinematography for these, on the bigger screen, is pretty awesome. Then the kerfuffle with the seating started. A woman was seated in the wrong seat in row c, in front of us. When the patron whose seat it was arrived she moved, along with her large collection of bags, to "her seat" further down the row. Five minutes later she had to move again, as she still wasn't in the right seat and, with all her bags, came and sat beside us. I asked her if  everything was ok and would she like help making sure she was in her right seat but she said she was fine and she was finally in the right seat. The film started five minutes later and up she jumps, grabs all her bags and goes to leave. As she's leaving she realises she's lost something and then spends the next ten minutes, armed with her phone torch, searching rows c and d for whatever it is she's lost; people getting up and down with people getting their phone torches out to help her, before she finally left. Beginning of the film ruined! I spoke with the Manager, Tom Gibbons, afterwards and he apologised and offered some comps but as I said to him at the time that wasn't the point of my speaking with him and I didn't want comps - the point was that it seemed to me that the drinks reception he was hosting took precedence over the film goer and I suspected that the woman never had a ticket in the first place and snuck in because the staff were focusing on other things. Shame as the film was brilliant but the prelude was spoiled by all the seating shenanigans which should never happen in a venue charging what curzon charge! Looks as if we will have to find another cinema!!!!!!!