Mayflower Theatre Southampton

The Mayflower Theatre in Southampton is an old theatre, but I was impressed with their disability awareness and adaptations, despite some of the difficulties. 

For those of you who want to reserve a disabled ticket wheelchair space with your companions, you will need to phone the theatre up and speak to them directly. Unfortunately, the process will be long as you will be asked to make an access membership, particularly for that theatre before you can book any tickets. For the access membership, you need to fill out a form and send evidence of your disability before you can even think about getting a ticket. Once the access membership form has been submitted you need to telephone them again to confirm that they’ve received the form and only then can you move forward and book tickets for the performance.

The disability access within the theatre was a bit sketchy and typical of an old theatre. Customers must enter the theatre via a fire escape at the size of the building after moving up and down the many roads to get there. You then have to wait in an area with other disabled customers before the members of staff will direct you where to sit. Once in your seat, there is room where you can sit in comfort while watching the show.

I was pleasantly surprised regarding the disabled toilet within the theatre. As it was an old theatre, I thought it would be a standard size disabled toilet, thrown in nappy bins and several things strewn all over the floor but I found it to be a suitable size with a lot of space. Unfortunately, though I couldn’t use it still due to its not having a hoist within the facility however I was pleased with the amount of space there was.

My Dad and I sat in one of the first rows closest to the stage. This was a surprise because there were a lot of schools seeing the production of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the same time. But the place where I was sitting was slightly outside the rows of seats and I had a great view of the stage. I am not sure what other seats there are for those disabled customers and their companions for the back in the theatre. I really hope that they are good enough seats, and you don’t have to struggle to watch your chosen production because there are a number of heads blocking your eyesight to the stage. I know from other theatres how frustrating this can be.

The members of staff at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton were nice and helpful. They assisted us throughout to help us get to the right places within the theatre and to our seats. Unlike other theatres that I’ve been to, the members of staff here also came to check on us before the production started during the interval and afterwards to make sure we were comfortable and make sure we didn’t need anything.

I would recommend this theatre to those around Southampton as there is something about it that allows me to connect to the production a lot more than the biggest theatre. For those customers with a disability or our wheelchair users, I would just be aware of the negative points and factor this into your visit.