The Tub Verdict: Inside the Fan Scorecard Ranking Britain's Theatre Intervals
There is a moment, somewhere around the twenty-minute mark of the interval, when a night at the theatre reveals its true character. Not the set. Not the sightlines. Whether the ice cream has sold out before you got to the front.
For a certain breed of UK theatregoer, that moment has become a science. Across group chats, group chats' group chats and one increasingly elaborate shared spreadsheet, a loose alliance of fans has spent the past few years quietly grading venues on their interval offering — the speed of the queue, the quality of the spoon, the structural integrity of the tub, the price, and that most unquantifiable of risks, whether the whole thing is worth gambling your clean shirt on before act three.
They call it the Tub Verdict. Nobody can quite agree who started it. Everybody agrees it has become essential.
It Began With a Bad Spoon
The project has its origin story, as all good fan projects do, in a grievance.
"I had paid four pounds something for a tub and the spoon snapped in half on the second scoop," says Priya, a Manchester-based regular who now helps maintain the sheet. "And I thought — this is information. This is information that nobody is collecting. We review the show, we review the seats, we never review the thirty seconds that keep a person going through a difficult second act."
What started as a note in a group chat is now a database covering more than 140 venues, from vast touring houses to a converted church with seventy seats and one very committed volunteer on a cool box.
The Scoring System, Briefly
Entries are scored out of fifty across five categories, because someone in the group is a project manager and could not be stopped.
- Queue velocity. How quickly can a full auditorium be served by two people and a card reader? Marks are lost for a single-file shuffle that eats the entire interval.
- Spoon integrity. Wooden, plastic, metal, or the small compostable spade that everyone secretly loves. Snapped spoons are logged as incidents.
- Tub engineering. Does it hold? Does it sweat? Does it leak gently onto your programme during the emotional bit?
- Value. Price versus portion versus whether the flavour actually tastes of the thing it claims to taste of.
- Third-act risk. The catch-all category: melt speed, seat distance, whether you'll be eating it in the dark while someone on stage delivers a monologue.
There is also a ".5 column", officially titled Availability, which records whether the venue reliably runs out. It is the column that ends friendships.
The Table, As It Stands This Autumn
A snapshot from the current sheet, with venues anonymised at the request of the maintainers, who are keen to stress this is a bit of fun and not an act of war.
| Venue type | Queue | Spoon | Tub | Value | Risk | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1904 matchbox, North West | 9/10 | 10/10 | 8/10 | 9/10 | 8/10 | Pre-order form on the back of the seat. Genuinely moved the needle. |
| Big South Bank barn | 6/10 | 7/10 | 8/10 | 5/10 | 6/10 | Four tills, one open. Eternal mystery. |
| Regional producing house, Midlands | 8/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 | Local dairy, proper scoops, staff who shout the flavours. |
| Converted church, 70 seats | 10/10 | 8/10 | 6/10 | 10/10 | 10/10 | Cool box. Honesty tin. Complete chaos. Beloved. |
| Touring stop, seaside | 5/10 | 6/10 | 7/10 | 7/10 | 4/10 | Sold out at 7.40pm. Venue still under review. |
The 1904 matchbox is currently top of the pile, largely on the strength of the pre-order form, which the sheet describes as "the single greatest innovation in British theatre since the barcode ticket".
The Case for Taking It Seriously
The obvious question, and the one the group gets most, is why bother.
The answer, according to Tom, who has contributed more than sixty entries, is that the interval is not a break from the evening. It is part of it.
"Theatre is one of the few nights out where you are in a room with hundreds of strangers, all feeling the same thing at the same time," he says. "The interval is the only bit where you're allowed to talk about it. You're standing in a foyer, holding a small tub, and someone turns to you and says 'what did you make of that, then?' That's the bit people remember."
Nadia, who runs a theatre book club in Bristol and has been logging venues since the early days, puts it more bluntly. "A venue that has thought about the interval has thought about the audience. You can tell. It's not about luxury. The church with the cool box scores higher than the big barn with four tills because somebody there cares whether you're having a nice time."
The project has also produced genuinely useful side effects. Several venues, having somehow got wind of their scores, have added a second till, widened a queue lane, or started stocking a dairy-free option that isn't simply the sad one at the back.
The Third-Act Gamble
No entry is complete without a note on risk. The group has developed a rough taxonomy.
Low risk: you're in an aisle seat, the interval is twenty minutes, and the second act opens with a lighting change. Eat in peace.
Medium risk: the tub is fine but you're four rows from the front and the actor has already made eye contact with someone once tonight. Proceed with caution and a napkin.
High risk: the show's second act is a single unbroken ninety-minute monologue, the tub is a melty one, and your seat is in the middle of a row. The sheet advises: finish it standing up, in the foyer, like a professional.
"I have eaten ice cream in a stairwell," says Priya. "I have eaten it faster than is dignified. I regret nothing."
The Unwritten Rules
The sheet's intro tab has a short etiquette section, and it is the most-read part.
Don't score a venue on a preview night. Don't mark down a small volunteer-run venue for being chaotic. Don't post a score to a venue's social media without warning them first, because that's not the point. And — a rule added in block capitals after an incident — don't stand in the queue taking notes while the show is going back in.
The general feeling is that the league table is a love letter written by people who go a lot, for people who are about to go. It is not a takedown. It is a record of affection, kept in a place where the affection can be checked before you buy the ticket.
How to Add to It
The sheet is open to new contributors, though the process is deliberately low-tech: a form, a short chat, and an agreement not to be a menace about any of it. New entries are welcomed from anywhere, but there is a soft rule that you should have visited at least once before you pass judgement, which feels fair.
The group is currently working on a winter update, plus a special section on venues that offer something hot for the December crowd. Somebody has already suggested a separate rating for the mince pie. Somebody else has said, reasonably, that this is how it starts.
If you're at a theatre this week and the spoon snaps, you know where to send it.
