Stalls at the Duchess Theatre

Rows A to O, below street level, and most of the theatre: 315 of its 505 seats. If you want the best view in the building, this is where it is.

Where we'd put you

The middle of the Stalls, from Row E to Row K, away from the ends of the rows. Even row E is close enough that the small stage fills your view, and by row K you're still near enough to catch every expression. The rake is quite shallow and doesn't really start until row H, so the floor doesn't climb much from one row to the next, and with the stage this close, that rarely matters.

If you'd like to spend less, take a second-price seat about a third of the way across a row, just off the centre. You keep a full view of the stage and pay noticeably less than the middle of the row. The seats right on the ends are cheaper again and fine for the money, though they miss a slice of the stage.

What to avoid

Think twice about the ends of rows A to E. The front rows curve in, those end seats are marked restricted, and they lose the far corner of the stage, so sit as central as you can. The very front also sits a little low to the stage, so expect to look up. For The Play That Goes Wrong, avoid the far ends of any row: part of the set on one side, including the fireplace, is hard to see from there, and some of the jokes happen right beside it.

The back of the Stalls isn't the problem you might expect. The last couple of rows sit under the edge of the Dress Circle, but with a shallow rake the overhang isn't a disaster, and the back row is only 14 rows from the stage.

Legroom and getting to your seat

There's no centre aisle in rows A to K, so you reach your seat from the sides, and from row L back a centre aisle runs down to row O. That makes the side-aisle ends of row F, F1 and F22, the seats with a little more legroom. Elsewhere it's an old theatre and the legroom is tight in places, so if you're tall, an aisle end is the one to look for.

Getting down there, drinks and toilets

It's 20 steps down from the foyer, and there's no lift. The stair climber that normally takes wheelchair users down is out of service; the access page has the detail and what the theatre does instead. Once you're down, you don't have to climb back up at the interval: the Stalls bar is on this level, with movable seating, and so are the Ladies, the Gents and an accessible toilet.