New seats or not, the show must go on.
At Sidney’s Star Cinema, owner-operator Sandy Oliver’s excitement over the plush, modern new seats she ordered turned to disappointment when the wrong seats showed up and had to be reordered.
Making things worse, all the old seats had been removed to make way for the new ones.
It’s a dilemma loyal patrons and Oliver were not about to take sitting down.
Oliver rolled out a BYOC — bring your own chair — promotion, reducing admission to $6 for the inconvenience.
Patrons responded by bringing in a potpourri of seating, from lawn chairs to flowery, overstuffed couches.
Michael Beardon and his wife, Mannie, owners of Sidney-based Freedom Scooter Co., donated a batch of comfy second-hand chairs and couches to tide the theatre over, Oliver said, and St. Paul’s United Church and Mary Winspear Theatre have also helped.
“It’s quite a hoot having such a hodgepodge,” she said Monday. “It’s been like an indoor version of a show at the bandshell.”
To adhere to building codes, seating capacity has been reduced to 60 in Cinemas 1 and 2, which have normal capacities of 125 and 150, until the new seats arrive.
The cost of cosmetic renovations and the Star’s deluxe new theatre seats, complete with cupholders and removable armrests, have been defrayed by proceeds from the purchase of seat plaques by patrons whose names they will bear.
“The seats we had before were literally 30 years old,” Oliver said. They had been bought used from the Odeon in Victoria in the mid-1990s. “For some people they were OK, but many people said we can’t come back until you get new seats.”
Those seats are now scheduled to arrive in the second week of November.
Meanwhile, Oliver is even accommodating some patrons with an in-theatre coffee table. “I should be charging double instead of half price,” she said with a laugh.
